


Craving Kylo

by ElegyGoldsmith



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BDSM, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Dark, Dom/sub, Dominant Kylo Ren, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Fifty Shades of Reylo, Frottage, Jealousy, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Masochist Rey, Power Imbalance, Sadist Kylo Ren, Smut, Submissive Rey (Star Wars), Unhealthy Relationships, Virgin Rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-05-24 08:49:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElegyGoldsmith/pseuds/ElegyGoldsmith
Summary: “Goddamnyou’re beautiful when you’re terrified,” he breathes, entranced.Her heart thuds a tattoo of shock amid the silence. Icy revulsion slithers through her, but it’s quickly seared away by the sick longing that heats the secret place between her legs at the thought of surrendering herself to Kylo.It should be unfathomable, trading herself away to him to be used for his perverse pleasures — but the insides of her thighs slip against each other, slick with hunger as she imagines him rutting inside her and debasing her.Her fingers tremble against his lapels as she considers her options. How can she want this?She should try to fight back. Retreat, make contact with Finn’s friends. They might have connections — a politician, a district attorney maybe. Someone with actualpower, not a self-taught engie from the middle of nowhere.Sheshould.





	1. Kylo Ren

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Noli Me Tangere [Touch Me Not]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11785977) by [PoetHrotsvitha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoetHrotsvitha/pseuds/PoetHrotsvitha). 



> Dark, kinky dub-con in a Beauty and the Beast- or FSOG-style AU <3
> 
> Totally inspired by PoetHrotsvitha's epically awesome Noli Me Tangere, which inspired me to write fanfic for the first time and post it here on AO3 in one swell foop!

Rey paces around the unfamiliar sitting room, out of her mind with worry. According to her wristwatch it’s only been eight minutes since that security goon ushered her to this hushed chamber, but the time feels eternal, as though she’s always been waiting here. The view of the Sound is impeccable through the sitting room’s immense windows, Seattle’s nighted lights twinkling up at her like a carpet of glowing wildflowers — but the memory of why she’s come, of Finn’s disappearance and the ominous phone call of an hour ago, keeps her stomach knotted with fear.

What’s Finn gotten himself into this time? Ever since they met he’s seemed to careen from one dangerous situation to another, and Rey’s current surroundings have her more worried than any of the other times she's bailed him out. Only rich people have private security and rooms like this. Rey doesn’t trust rich people — only other people like her and Finn, who’ve had to scrabble for everything.

What the hell brought him here?

She glances around dubiously. The study is old-world and ornately appointed, with a couch set before a working fireplace and a cherry writing desk at its back. A bell jar rests proudly upon a table near the window, a single red rose reposing amid its crystalline embrace, but Rey is too distracted to appreciate its beauty. She considers sitting in one of the armless chairs flanking the banked hearth, but then thinks better of it. She’s come here to make a deal; she should be on her feet when whoever she’s negotiating with arrives.

Even so, Rey jumps as a bookshelf swings open to reveal a hidden doorway, her heart slamming against her ribs as a tall, dark-haired man emerges from the hallway beyond. His charcoal suit makes her self-consciously smooth her clothes against her slim body, as though that can somehow persuade him to overlook the city’s grime that always clings to her. Her black-and-violet leggings, drab grey tunic, and battered leather jacket are no match for whatever silken Italian metamaterial is in fashion this spring.

She’d know his face anywhere, but actually being in the same room with him is a shock. Kylo Ren, deceptively young president of KoR Technology, one of the city’s hottest luminaries — and ardent opponent of the OSF, the so-called philanthropic group that’s been drawing Finn deeper and deeper into their mysterious “causes.”

It’s his home, of course — his palatial apartment set atop this skyscraper like a jewel. Rey thinks of Finn’s face, his features contorted with anger as he waxes poetic about the secret wrongs this pale stranger is perpetrating against the OSF and Seattle itself. It’s what he does with his new friends, Poe and Rose, sitting on the front stoop as their outraged voices echo off the depressed buildings. Rey’s own impression of the man, gleaned from any number of digital articles and a few dark web vids, has been equally unsettling, but for altogether different reasons.

Kylo’s black gaze settles on Rey, and something trembles deep within her as he moves forward to shake her hand. Even without touching him she knows his black leather gloves will be warm beneath her fingers, and unyielding as the rest of him. “Kylo Ren.”

“I know who you are,” Rey says quickly, avoiding his hand as though he’s proffering a live snake. It’s hard enough keeping her anxiety in check from so close. Actually touching him would be madness.

“Of course. You must be Rey.” Kylo’s dark eyes narrow, making his long face seem even more dour than he looks on all those magazine covers. The scion of two of the city’s most powerful benefactors, anyone in Seattle could recognize his pale, ever-so-slightly crooked countenance, his proud nose and full lips. How he knows _ her _ is an altogether different matter; Finn must have given him her name. “A pity we have to meet under such unfortunate circumstances.”

Kylo gestures to the lone seat to the right of the fireplace, unbuttoning his jacket as he seats himself on the end of the couch closest to her. Rey sinks into the chair gratefully, knotting her fingers in her lap. Finn’s message was garbled with haste; the address and time to meet were the only things she’d understood, and the word  _ negotiation _ . “What  _ are  _ those circumstances, exactly?”

“I’m afraid that at just past seven-thirty this evening, my private security force apprehended your friend Finn attempting to hack my private access terminal, which leads to KoR Technology’s mainframe.”

The breath freezes in Rey’s lungs. This isn’t breaking and entering, or tagging up a building, or even jacking someone’s ride. This is serious … and if Kylo is wasting his no doubt invaluable time talking to  _ her _ , Finn is in way, way over his head.

“Evidently he was looking for a decryption key to a particular piece of software — something I don’t actually possess, as it happens,” Kylo adds. His posture is one of casual reserve; if he’s lying, it’s with utter confidence. “But corporate espionage carries a not-inconsiderable prison sentence. An average of fifteen years, give or take.”

Rey can feel her neat eyebrows drawing together in a scowl as she tries to understand how she fits into this horrible puzzle. “But you haven’t contacted the authorities yet, have you? —or else I wouldn’t be here.”

The corner of Kylo’s mouth quirks in a restrained grin, but he offers nothing. She's on the right track, and it's amusing him to watch her work it out.

“But … if there’s no harm, there’s no foul, then,” Rey says, laughing a little in relief. This has all been some big foul-up — and she deliberately ignores the crest of disappointment that this will all be over so soon. She must’ve misunderstood the frantic tone of Finn’s voice; she’ll have to give him a firm talking-to on the way back to the rat-trap apartment they share.  _ Again _ . “Let Finn go and I promise we'll never bother you again.”

Kylo holds up an elegant forefinger, stopping her. “There  _ was _ transgression, if not actual theft.”

“But if he didn’t  _ take _ anything-”

“He tore a hole in my security net big enough to fly an A380 through,” he snaps, cutting through her self-righteous fury. “And whether or not I choose to prosecute him for it, he’s now in my debt.”

Rey glares at him, refusing to let herself be cowed by that steely glint in his gaze, the confident set of his jaw. He may be richer than Elon Musk, but something about the emptiness of this apartment tells her he’s equally hollow. “That’s cold.”

“Cold survives,” he murmurs.

There’s that emptiness again — but it will have to wait. Kylo’s obsidian eyes are fixed on her as she struggles to make sense of the situation. Whatever he wants clearly isn’t something Finn can give him, and he’s watching Rey with a strange impatience, a tendon standing out like a cord in the hollow of his temple. His gaze traverses her entire body and she shifts under the intensity of it, her heart slamming against her ribs as she remembers the darkest whispers about the man whose knee is right now so very close to her own.

A man who gets off on bending women to his will.

It should be abysmally wrong to think of Kylo Ren with anything but terror, but all she can think of as she stares at his full, crooked lips is what they’d feel like pressed to her own.

Heat rises to her cheeks, and she knows she’s staring but she can’t tear her gaze away. Does a man like him even kiss? Those pictures and vids on the ’net only showed his cruelty.

“I’ve heard you’re a man of … s-singular tastes,” Rey manages, her throat parched as her sex cramps with sudden, heartsick wanting.

His expression changes to one of glacial amusement at her words. “Does that disgust you?”

“They say you’re a monster.”

Kylo shakes his head, chuckling as though he’s indulging an innocent. “All my partners consent to my whims. There’s nothing monstrous about that.” He pauses, and one of his angular eyebrows arches with amusement. “And whatever you know about me, it hasn’t stopped you from coming here tonight.”

He sits forward slowly, a tendril of his dark hair coiling over his brow as his magnetic gaze holds her fast. His voice is a low purr. “So what have you come to offer me, Rey?”

He knows. He can’t read her thoughts, surely, but despite the confusion they share an understanding again.

Kylo has something she wants. And he wants  _ her _ in return.

“I’ll…” Rey’s voice emerges as an unsteady croak, and she stops, taking another quick breath to bolster herself as she searches for words to speak the unspeakable. It’s one thing to read gossip about a man who’s a clean-cut if ruthless businessman by day and indulges in all sorts of whispered perversions at night; it’s altogether another thing to be throwing herself on his mercy for Finn’s sake.

Finn would do the same for her if the situations were reversed — and surely one quick fuck is more than worth a decade and a half of her best friend’s freedom. “I’ll sl-sleep with you if you let Finn go, and don’t tell anyone we were ever here.”

“No.”

The word hits Rey like a physical blow, and she sags back against her seat, glaring in astonishment. “ _ No? _ ”

“If I turn your friend over to the authorities for prosecution, he goes to jail for years. Possibly decades.” Kylo stares ahead at the glowing coals, their light playing strangely over his face. He looks like he’s been hewn from marble. “Did you know he used to work for Snoke Industries?”

Rey nods. Of course. She doubts his OSF pals would be interested in him otherwise, but that had never mattered to her.

“And if you’ve heard of me, surely you know of  _ their  _ reputation. Crossing them means risking my relationship with an old friend, someone who made me who I am today — so in return for the risk you're asking me to assume, I want something more … substantial.”

She waits, trembling with each thudding heartbeat, as he gazes at the embers.

Finally Kylo’s dark eyes find her again, sending a frisson of longing along Rey’s spine. “I’ll release your friend, but only if you agree to stay in his place.”

“ _ What? _ ” She can feel the violent heat rising in her cheeks, because what he’s asking is outrageous. Unthinkable.

And yet, he  _ wants  _ her … and she sways in her seat, gutted with longing for him.

“Do you think you’re up to the challenge of being my prisoner?” he asks, his low voice cool as though he’s asking her something utterly reasonable.

She lifts her chin haughtily, refusing to let him see how her fingers tremble at the very thought, betraying how much she wants to give in to him. “Better me than Finn.”

“So you’re sacrificing yourself, then.” Kylo’s upper lip curls disdainfully as he rises to his feet and looks away, shaking his head as he buttons his jacket. Disappointment threatens to crush her ribcage to kindling — is he leaving already? “I have exacting standards, enthusiasm among them.”

No, not yet. Not like this.

Suddenly Rey is on her feet with no memory of how she got there. Kylo watches her with that intense, predatory interest again, and her pulse sings in her ears as she steps closer to him, bewitched.

She can give him enthusiasm. Part of her suspects — or perhaps only fears — that she’ll hate herself for it later when the intoxicating lust wears off, but eagerness for Kylo and what he might do to her lurk just beneath the surface of her skin.

The willowy man slips his arm about her waist, silently welcoming her to him, and her heart thrums in her chest as she fixes her eyes on the open V of fabric at the top of his button-down shirt. It’s only now that she notices he isn’t wearing a tie, and the hollow of his throat is visible above the black silken fabric. She’s struck by a sudden impulse to nuzzle into it as he pulls her close against him.

The intermingled aromas of sunbaked heat and an exotic spice that Rey can't name emanate from Kylo’s body, and her head spins drunkenly as he brings face down to meet hers. He hesitates for a moment, and then his lips are sealed against Rey’s, drinking her in as his arm tightens at her waist.

A moan escapes Rey as Kylo parts her lips with his tongue and probes her mouth, claiming her and demanding she submit all at once. A low growl reverberates through his throat, and she can taste his hunger. She’s suddenly become a woman possessed by need, as though it's a tangible thing crawling beneath her skin. Her whole body aches for his touch, and she writhes against him, cajoling him for more.

Kylo’s lips are still tantalizingly close as he breaks away from her to murmur, “I could be a kind master to you. Or cruel, if I wanted to be.”

“You’d only be kind if I did exactly what you want,” Rey gasps into his neck, the words shaky and small amid the sitting room’s hush. “As long as I was  _ obedient _ . That's what you like, isn't it?”

“Yes.” His teeth tease her earlobe, sending a fresh wave of wanting through her limbs, and his molten gold voice seems to pour through her every nerve. “Take off your clothes.”

The thought of being naked before Kylo, not at some future time when she’s better prepared but  _ now _ , is enough to snap Rey out of the hypnotic languor she’s fallen into. She twists in his hold, panic threatening to kill the warmth that’s already begun to gather deep within her like fireflies. “N-No, I can’t fuck you yet-”

Kylo surprises her by laughing, even as his implacable gaze rages at her. “You’re not going to fuck me, sweet little Rey. You’re not going to fuck anyone.” His arm is an iron prison about her waist, and the black-gloved fingers of his free hand knots in her hair, forcing Rey to lift her face to meet his. His voice is dangerously soft, belying the storm that rages in his eyes. “You’re going to _ get  _ fucked like the prisoner you are.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet,” Rey hisses, a desperate whine threading through her words.

“Consider this a down payment on your friend’s freedom.”

Rey stares at Kylo, her eyes narrowed in rage and disbelief. “Are you telling me you doubt I can meet your  _ exacting standards _ ? That you need … what, fucking  _ proof? _ ”

“You’re a strange woman who’s barged her way into my home in the middle of the night and demanded I take her body in exchange for covering up an attempted theft.” Kylo shakes his head, his full mouth twisting in a handsome sneer as his laughter shakes her body. “I don’t owe you any measure of trust.”

Mortification floods Rey’s limbs like hot lead. Whatever Finn’s doing with the Organa-Solo Foundation is obviously less than legit, but hearing Kylo phrase her own actions that way makes her want to melt into his richly carpeted floor.

“Prancing in here in those ass-tight leggings, practically begging me to bend you over my desk and fuck you…” Kylo frees his hand from Rey’s locks and caresses her mouse-brown hair now, sending a fresh wave of goosebumps over her skin as some dark and buried part of her chants  _ yesyesyes _ .

His eyes are luminous in the dim room, and she can feel his heartbeat thrumming through his body like struck steel as he runs his fingers along the curve of her cheek.

“God _ damn _ you’re beautiful when you’re terrified,” he breathes, entranced.

Her heart thuds a tattoo of shock amid the silence. Icy revulsion slithers through her, but it’s quickly seared away by the sick longing that heats the secret place between her legs at the thought of surrendering herself to Kylo.

It should be unfathomable, trading herself away to him to be used for his perverse pleasures — but the insides of her thighs slip against each other, slick with hunger as she imagines him rutting inside her and debasing her.

Her fingers tremble against his lapels as she considers her options. How can she want this?

She should try to fight back. Retreat, make contact with Finn’s friends. They might have connections — a politician, a district attorney maybe. Someone with actual  _ power _ , not a self-taught engie from the middle of nowhere.

She  _ should _ .

Rey slowly lowers her arms, letting her leather jacket slip from her shoulders and pool on the floor behind her. “No.” Kylo’s slim, graceful fingers close about her wrist as she reaches for the hem of her shirt. “I’ve changed my mind, pet. I want you to keep the rest of your clothes on for now.” Rey gapes at the pale man in confusion as he withdraws from her and sits back on the couch. He pats his lap, his full lips curving a ghostly smirk as he gazes up at her. “Sit here.”

She hesitates, only moving when he pats his lap again, encouraging her. He’s utterly serious — and she feels her cheeks burning crimson again as she seats herself sideways over his bent knees. Her boots dangle above the floor and she feels suddenly vulnerable, conscious of how much bigger than her he is. Even sitting he threatens to loom over her; she’s putting herself in the lion’s jaws acquiescing to him like this.

A surprised squeak escapes Rey as Kylo slips one arm under her knees and the other behind the small of the back, resettling her so that she’s propped against his chest. He chuckles at the noise his sudden movement evokes in her, and runs his palm along the outside of her thigh to the curve of her hip, admiring her body.

“Tell me why you’d do this.” His soft voice coaxes her, his onyx eyes showing her that heartbreaking tenderness that can’t possibly be real. It’s a trick, a basilisk’s stare, ready to rend her asunder as soon as she succumbs to him.

Adrenaline runs through her veins like mercury, but gravity is no friend to her right now; she can’t escape him.

“Why would you surrender your body to a man you don’t even know for  _ his _ sake?” She doesn’t need to ask to know whom he means. “He must be a better friend than he is a hacker.”

“Finn’s my friend,” Rey gruffly admits. There can’t be any harm in offering up that much — although, at the core of things, there isn’t much more to tell. “He never leaves me behind.”

“And now you’re refusing to leave him here.” Kylo caresses her thigh again, his head twitching in disbelief as he considers her words. “You must’ve been terrified coming here, knowing what you seem to already know about me.” This time his hand doesn’t stop at the curve of her hip but moves steadily higher, past the curve of her waist. Rey stiffens against Kylo as he cups her breast, the leather of his gloves whispering as he squeezes experimentally. “Yet still you came.”

She watches his black-gloved hand, hardly daring to breathe as he runs his thumb over the gentle swell in her cotton-knit shirt. Something throbs beneath the curve of her ass, and the muscles deep in her belly clench in response. He’s staring at her body like he wants to devour her, and the tendon in his temple jumps again as the throbbing comes again.

Rey shivers as Kylo’s oblivion-dark gaze finds hers, stirring her to her core. “Kiss me.”

“Why?” she whispers.

His full lips twist in a condescending grin. "Because I told you to.”

It’s so unbearably wrong the way that his words make her dizzy with lust, but she’s drawn to him like a moth to a ravaging pyre. His lips taste like smoldering coals, and she sinks into him completely as he pulled her close against his chest. His fingers tighten on her full ass, and she whimpers into his mouth, not even sure when or how her arms find their way around his neck.

All too soon he pulls away from her again, leaving her forsaken and wanting. His pupils are dilated, making his ink-dark eyes look even darker, but his fingers dig into her sensitive skin, refusing to let her retreat from him. His gaze burns with urgency. “How does it feel, giving yourself to me like that? Tell me the truth.”

“It felt … good,” Rey admits shyly.

Kylo grazes her cheek with a leather-gloved hand again, a faint smile curving his lips. “Good girl. When I ask you a question, I want your honest answer.”

He fumbles at her waist, and it’s only after two soft slapping sounds break the quiet that she realizes he’s tugged off his gloves and cast them aside. His fingertips threaten to burn her as he turns her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “From now until I’m done fucking you tonight, you will call me ‘sir,’ do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” she mumbles, his insistence making her feel strangely rebellious.

Kylo nodded, the city’s lights shining off his raven-dark hair like starlight. “We’ll talk about more conditions later, if you agree to stay with me the way I want you to.” Is it his gentle pressure on her back that makes Rey drift closer to him again, or her own desire? She can’t tell them apart anymore. “Kiss me.”

Rey's mouth finds Kylo’s again as his hand scorches her stomach, skimming up along the bare skin that lies beneath her tunic. He savagely yanks her bra down, forcing her breast up out of the cushioned fabric cup before she can protest. A panting  _ ahhhh _ erupts from her as he tweaks her nipple, hardening it to a diamondine point and sending ecstatic jolts skittering into the depths of her abdomen.

“Do you like this?” Kylo mumbles roughly around Rey’s lips as he frees her other breast from its fabric prison, claiming it as he did the first.

She knows she should tell him his touch is like venom, but her drenched core throbs, betraying her at the very thought of lying to him. Kylo’s fingertips linger against her, savoring her supple flesh, trespassing where no one but Rey herself has ever touched. No amount of protestations will be able to quiet the snarling hunger his touch inspires in her. “Yes, sir.”

Kylo chuckles again, and she instinctively rolls her hips as the rigid length beneath the curve of her ass pulses again. “Only a dirty little slut could stand being treated like this.” He catches her chin in his hand, regarding her somberly. “Is that what you are? A slut?”

“No!” Rey whimpers — and then she gasps as Kylo’s open palm stings her backside through her leggings. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but it’s jarring enough to remind her of her mistake. “No,  _ sir _ .”

“But you want me to take you.”

She glares at him, stung by how easily he makes his assumption. “ _ No. _ ”

Kylo only laughs coldly at her impotent wrath. “I doubt that. If I reach down here…” He trails his fingers over the apex of Rey’s thighs, making her mewl and writhe away from him again in vain. “...what do you think I’m going to find?”

His chilly tone makes Rey slit her eyes at him again. “I’m sure you wouldn’t dare.”

“ _ Sir _ ,” he prompts, his voice dangerously soft.

Rey lets her glare speak for her.

Kylo’s fingers slide to her neck, caging her slender muscles in a loose grip. He regards her carefully, as though examining her, and his tone is languid as he ignores her infraction. “I’m going to fuck you, Rey. That’s going to be a hell of a lot more intimate than just touching.” He shoots a pointed glance at her tunic. “Take your shirt off.”

She crosses her arms. “Why don’t you just take it off me?”

“I could,” Kylo purrs patiently, ignoring the razor edge of hostility that’s found its way into her voice, “but the point is that you do it voluntarily. Willingly.” His fingers move beneath the shroud of dark fabric, massaging her breast again. “You someone to help you channel that anger, that fire burning inside you.”

Some secret hope flares within her at his words. Everyone has always left her — the parents that had abandoned her as a child, her abusive mentor Unkar Plutt, even Finn, leaving her behind for his OSF friends. No one can ever see past her hardened exterior to the heart that’s as dessicated as the deserts of her Nevada homeland.

No one has taken care of her. Always and ever, she has only relied on herself.

His lips graze her jaw, setting her nerves on fire as he whispers, “You need a teacher, Rey.”

Whatever she was expecting when she first saw him, it wasn’t this. Kylo, a complete stranger, is the only one who’s ever asked, who’s ever  _ wanted  _ to see that side of her, who’s ever encouraged her to embrace it. Something in his lingering gaze can see past whatever hard shell she’s gathered about her over the years — yet he patiently waits for her to decide what she’ll do next.

She’s been so strong for so long that surrender almost seems out of reach.

Rey sits up, wordlessly tugging her tunic over her head and letting it drop on the floor beside the couch. The room’s climate-controlled air chills her bare skin, and she shivers as she leans back against Kylo, molding herself to the line of his chest. His full lips part in astonishment as he stares at her, and his gaze drifted lower, to where her pert breasts have been thrust above her simple black bra.

“These,” Kylo breathes. He brings his lips to her coral nipples, sucking them and swirling his tongue about them in turn.

Rey’s back arches, her head lolling back with rapture as Kylo traces wet designs on her tits. His grip on her tightens, growing more urgent as he teases her stiff peaks with his teeth, and she twists her fingers into his soft hair. Her pussy throbs with longing, and she can feel the moisture trickling out of her cleft to pool in her panties. “P-Please…”

“Kiss me like you want me, Rey,” Kylo rasps as he draws his dark, surly brow to meet hers. He presses his temple against her forehead, cradling her body against his so fiercely that for a moment she sees sparks. “Make me believe it.”

She cups his face in her hands, savoring the sensation of his sharp stubble abrading her skin as she brings her lips to meet the dark man’s. He rolls her nipples between his thumb and forefinger as his mouth possesses hers again, and she whimpers into him as his hand moves lower again, gliding over the waistband of her leggings to drive between her fabric-wrapped thighs.

“No,” she moans as he slides his fingers along the length of her sex, coaxing the sharply beautiful sensations to pool in her abdomen. He finds her easily over the slippery material, as though she’s already naked in his arms. “Kylo, you don’t have to do this...”

The dark man surges against her, and a cry tears itself from Rey’s throat as he abruptly thrusts his hand down the front of her leggings and soft cotton panties. He works his way against the flat of her abdomen, easily finding her slick, petal-soft folds before she can breathe.

“ _ Fuck _ , you’re soaked for me, Rey,” Kylo growls, his low, musical voice tight with need as his fingertips swirl about her clit in slow circles. “Do you want to feel me inside you?”

“Yes, sir,” she begs, too wrung out by the force of her longing to keep herself from him anymore.

“That’s my girl,” he croons, pleased, and some shadowy part of her soul has never been prouder.

Rey yields to Kylo’s touch as he reclaims his hand and helps her straddle his lap, leaving cool trails on her hip where his slick fingers touch her. His breaths reverberate shallowly against her throat, and his fingers scorch her skin as he draws her wrist to a place just below his belt where the fabric of his trousers is swollen taut. His lips tease hers, not quite kissing her as he murmurs, “This is how much I want you.”

The breath gushes from Rey’s lungs as Kylo presses her hand to his length and she tentatively runs her fingers along him. He hisses through clenched teeth at her feather-soft touch, his rigid cock straining at his trousers like a leashed serpent as he trembles with pleasure.

She bites back a grin to see his reaction, but her smug delight vanishes in the next moment as he slides her hips higher, ignoring their clothes as he brings her drenched quim to rest atop his rock-hard phallus.

“Give yourself to me, Rey,” Kylo groans through gritted teeth as he forces himself against her body and she cries out in rapturous response. “Sleep in my bed with me. Be my little whore and my pet and let me own you every way a person can.” He nuzzles against her, his temple sharp against her cheekbone as he quickens, his voice dropping to a low growl. “Let me defile you.”

The savage words take her breath away, and she imagines what it’ll feel like.  _ Penetration _ is a word of hurt and binding and breaking … and it’s been her deepest, darkest desire for as long as she can remember. It’s the word that fills her mind as she awakens her in the morning to find her own bloodless fingers jammed between her own legs, a wanton moan fleeing her lips.

It seemed such a simple idea at first, offering herself to him. But now that she’s on the verge of being naked in his arms as he shatters her maidenhead, it seems impossible.

Kylo’s body is vital against her; she can feel his frayed breathing, the strength in his muscles as he hitches her against him. He wants her — he’s wanted her since he first set eyes on her, she knows it without knowing. For reasons beyond her comprehension, even as he calls her a slut he’s treating her like a prize, a concubine, something to be treasured.

His splayed fingers claw at her back, and he snarls into her fevered skin. The more naked she becomes the more he’s reduced to a beast, his cold manners eroding beneath the force of his craving for her. If she could see his eyes, she knows he’d be glaring black flames at her as he presses her closer to her breaking point.

How can she love a terrible thing this much?

“Yes…” Rey begs.

Kylo twitches beneath her as she rides him, his hips lifting her helpless body as he grinds against her. She clutches at his shirt, working the buttons open with fumbling fingers. Caught in his rhythm as she is she blindly, desperately needs to feel him against her, and she sighs with delight as his shirt finally parts to reveal his the sculpted cords of his muscles. She melts into him with a sigh, reveling in the heat that emanates from his body like the sun as he strives against her.

Kylo imprisons Rey’s body against his as their panting breaths intermingle, and she whimpers hungrily as the ridge of his head finds her clit again and again, driving her toward a blinding edge.

“Fuck, I can’t wait anymore,” Kylo seethes breathlessly, and then his hands close on her hips again. “I need you.”

Rey shrieks in surprise as he twists her body, reseating her with her back against his chest and her knees pressed together between his own. The metal of his belt clinks as he works at it beneath her, his eager heartbeat resonating through her back. Then his fingers slide down along the outsides of her hips, shoving the waistbands of her leggings and panties down to her mid-thighs.

She doesn’t know what to expect, so it comes as a shock as Kylo lifts her ass and the blunt end of his cock spreads her dripping cunt, burying itself in her as she sinks onto him.

Rey clutches spasmodically at the couch, trying to keep her balance as her own weight impales her on Kylo’s throbbing phallus, but he holds her hips steady, pulling her down. She pants, wordless and overwhelmed as he stretches her to her utmost, her core opening to his advances as he wrenches her wider to admit him.

“So deep,” she gasped mindlessly as her skin prickles to gooseflesh.

He only laughs, his voice tight with his own pleasure as he pulls her derriere flush with his hips.

Kylo’s invasion is searing, inescapable, and she clings to him with growing desperation as he lifts her again, his harsh breaths tickling the shell of her ear. He thrusts into her as she falls to meet him, and her body shakes with the jarring force of his trespass within her, nipples aching as her breasts bounce against her useless, forgotten bra.

A guttural cry escapes Rey as Kylo twists his fingers into her hair again, dragging her head back to bare the curve of her neck. 

“Tell me you’re mine,” Kylo demands, his words warm and yearning against her skin as he splinters her pussy afresh. “Give yourself to me, Rey, and I'll let him go.”

She clenches her thighs tighter, rolling her hips as she sinks back against Kylo again. His thick, dull head slams against something deep inside her, pinching with a commingled pleasure-pain as he transfixes her. His jewels are tight against her ass, and his breaths are ragged against her as he bucks into her, his hips slapping wetly against hers as he rocks her faster and harder.

She wants to cry out with rapture, but he fills her so perfectly that her breaths come only shallowly.

Kylo fondles her breasts roughly, as if reminding her who truly owns her body right now, and his lustful groan fills the study as he relentlessly fucks her. “Give yourself to me.”

To feel this with Kylo, to save Finn, to save herself, Rey only has one choice.

“I’ll stay with you,” she murmurs, surging against him as he works himself into her even deeper still. “I'll t-take his place.”

Kylo flings an arm about Rey’s waist as he pumps into her, and his other hand slips between her pressed-shut thighs again, finding her clit with the rough pad of his thumb. “Tell me you’re my prisoner, pet,” he growls into her vulnerable neck. “Say it.”

“I’m yours,” Rey mews, desperate to please him the way he's pleasing her. Her body is already starting to clench around his inflamed length, her own nectar smoothing away any resistance as he ruts deep into her body and presses her closer to a blinding edge. His fingers circle the pearl at the apex of her thighs, drawing a howl of wordless anguish from her lips.

“Are you ready to take my cum, Rey?” Kylo’s words are velvet-edged, numbed with the force of his carnal need for her. “Fuck, I’m so close to giving it to you.”

“Harder,” she begs, the word melting into a sigh of longing as he pounds into her soft flesh.

Kylo shivers behind her with frenzied lust, his movements becoming convulsive as he nears. “Fuck, Rey…”

Heat rises inside him as his cum gathers, and she can hear herself shouting, clutching at him as they come undone together. Kylo’s cock shudders within her pussy, and she feels his seed spurting into her like liquid fury as he groans with release.

Her own mutinous body tightens about him, his alien girth striking new chords of rapture as the orgasm echoes through her.

“ _ My _ Rey,” Kylo hisses, his prick stiffening inside Rey as she writhes about him, lost to ecstasy.

They stay tangled together, panting, until Rey recovers her wits. Her cunt is sore from his punishment, and it aches reproachfully as she works herself free of Kylo’s thick member and shakily stands. His sticky essence floods her thighs as she rises, but she instinctively pulls her panties and leggings back up, preserving whatever shredded semblance of modesty is left to her.

She should feel dirty, used … but all she feels is dazed triumph.

A soft zipping and metallic jangling behind her signals that Kylo has refastened his pants, and Rey’s knees wobble as he stands up behind her, his body flooding heat onto her naked back. She shrugs her shoulders, resettling her breasts inside her bra, and glances about numbly for her tunic.

“Rey,” Kylo murmurs as he reaches for her.

He needs her now, and the aching way he says her name is reason enough to stay. In a moment his arms are about her again, pulling her close to his chest as his lips reclaim hers in a brutal kiss.

In that moment, Rey never wants to be free of him.

“Do we have a deal?” Kylo murmurs as he pulls away a few inches, his obsidian-dark eyes studying her carefully as he strokes her back with that strange tenderness. “Your freedom for his?”

Rey nuzzles into Kylo and gazes up at him, already losing herself in the depthless embrace that awaits her in his eyes.

Finn will be safe — that’s what matters. That’s what brought her here. If she has to stay behind with Kylo to seal the exchange, so be it.

“Yes,” Rey whispers.

Kylo’s lips twist in a grim smile, and his hand closed over Rey’s, engulfing her fingers almost entirely within his own.

“This way,” he murmurs, and as he leads her from the room it doesn't even matter where they're going. The city sleeps below them, unknowing, and she only has eyes for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ruh roh, Rey's in for it now! Time to get Finn on his way back to safety - but that means she's going to be completely alone with Kylo.
> 
> And they have some negotiating to do.
> 
> <3


	2. A Phoenix Alight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I already told you I’d stay with you!”
> 
> “Yes. But I want you to know exactly what you’re getting yourself into before you make that promise.” Kylo strides around the table toward Rey like a panther, confident of his advantage, and brings his face dangerously closer to hers as he leans against it. “I want to have your full consent, no turning back.” He reaches out to her slowly, as though mesmerized, and she quivers in her seat as his fingertips skate along her neck, exploring her tender skin. His voice is hypnotic, lulling her into surrender. “I want you to belong to me completely ... and that means sewing up every possible loophole you have to escape from me. Now. Before it’s too late.”
> 
> Kylo’s thumb and middle finger press against her neck, testing her. His strong hand can almost encircle her windpipe, but he only caresses her again and then withdraws, slipping out of her reach. He takes the seat beside hers, his control window sliding around the perimeter of the smoked glass table to follow him like a faithful hound. “Shall we begin?”
> 
> Rey can only nod, speechless, as they stare at each other and her sex throbs with renewed hunger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so we're all consenting adults here, right??
> 
> Rey has been a very naughty girl. Kylo's been bad, but our favorite tinkering roboticist has some serious secrets — and a few of them are about to be revealed.
> 
> TW: This is some dark, smexy stuff, all about Persephone-like abduction with Kylo and Rey. But hopefully that's what you're here for, in which case come on in... ;)

Rey has a secret.

It burns in her mind like an ember as Kylo draws her through the anonymous hallways of his penthouse apartment. She’s dizzy with her freshly-slaked lust, and the place is so labyrinthine that within moments of leaving the study she can't tell where he's leading her. His hand devours hers in an unbreakable grip, his firm heat more tattooing her skin than merely touching. She belongs to him — or has, and will again soon enough.

Darkness surrounds them. The walls and ceiling are a dark, glossy black, broken only by reverberations of light from the fiery electric sconces. It’s so Gothically minimalist and surreal that she forgets to pay attention to where she's walking; her feet tangle, flooded thighs slipping against each other in vain as she stumbles.

Kylo’s arm stiffens, steadying her, and her trembling knees catch her before she falls. His sullen face contorts with worry as he gazes down at her. “What is it?”

In truth it’s everything — her fear for Finn, Kylo’s intimidating manner, the utter disorientation of tumbling down such a strange path in her life without warning — but a physical need claws at her mind, clamoring for her attention. His warm essence trickles from her aching cleft, the discomfort so insistent that she can’t focus on anything else until it’s placated.

His concern darkens to impatience as she stares up at him, too mortified to admit what she must. “Are you hurt?”

Words elude her. The compulsion is like a snarling beast she battles with force of will alone, and she can feel her lower lip quivering as she stares up at him beseechingly.

Kylo’s fingers tighten on hers. “Talk to me, Rey. I can’t help you if you don’t.”

Punishing heat rushes to her cheeks as she claws the embarrassing words forth: “I have t-to go to the bathroom.”

The tension in Kylo’s face eases, and his already crooked mouth quirks in a slow, cruel smile. “Is someone feeling uncomfortable?”

She nods violently. Her foot twitches a nervous, tapping cadence as she watches him — is he going to torture her afresh? Malice sparkles in his gaze, the kind she hates herself for yearning for. Even standing here in this hushed corridor she hungers for him, the telltale fluttering echoing through her sex as he leans closer, invading her humble space.

Kylo’s voice is an ominous murmur. “Good.”

For a moment she thinks he’s going to kiss her again, but then he withdraws, even dropping her fingers to tap his sleek smartwatch. “Phasma.”

The opening of a door somewhere around a bend in the hallway makes the breath gush from Rey’s lungs. In her obsession with Kylo she’d forgotten they weren’t alone here; he’s a magnate, not the kind of person who would ever be alone in his own apartment, bereft of some minder or guardian. She barely has time to compose herself before a figure even taller than the raven-haired man rounds the corner and greets him with a curt nod.

Rey recognizes the woman at once; it’s the same security guard or bodyguard that led her to Kylo’s study when she first arrived here tonight. The stranger is broad-shouldered and imposing, a shock of ash-blonde hair giving way to a punkish quarter-shave above eyes bluer than Arctic glaciers. Her haughty gaze flicks over Rey only once before returning to Kylo. “Sir?”

“Clean her up, then bring her to me.” His words are disdainful, cold, at arm’s length again now that they’re no longer alone. That need for her is locked beneath the surface of his icy gaze, imprisoned within manners more hyperborean than stone. Yet she can still see Kylo’s passion seething behind his polite mask, his desire for her undiminished by this civil distance.

“Don’t keep me waiting,” he tells her softly, and she shivers with wanting as his full lips brush hers in a rough, possessive kiss.

Phasma’s fingers clamp around Rey’s upper arm, tugging her around the corner. Kylo vanishes in the click of a doorway, and a few quick turns later a black marble bathroom lies before her, its diffuse lights welcoming.

Rey plants her feet, boots squeaking against the charcoal tiles as she blocks the towering woman from entering the room behind her. “I can clean myself up alone, thank you!”

Phasma glowers down at her, the flaring points of her black eyeliner knifing across her pale temples. “When I’m given an order, I take it. And if you want to be here with Mr. Ren, you’ll learn to do the same.”

Rey twists free of Phasma’s grip, pleased by the astonishment that flashes across the other woman’s face like lightning. “What I’m doing here is none of your business. And unless you want to explain to  _ Mr. Ren _ why you’ve got yourself a nice pair of black eyes to match that makeup, you’ll leave me on the other side of this door for ten minutes.”

Phasma is silent for a moment, probably weighing her options. She may have the sturdier frame, but Rey’s strength is wiry, catlike. Tangling with her is an uncertain prospect for someone with such a high center of gravity.

“He didn’t explicitly tell you  _ not _ to let me clean myself up,” Rey presses, refusing to let her galloping heartbeats betray her intimidation.

To her relief, Phasma reluctantly steps back. “You have five minutes,” she snaps, and Rey yanks the door closed, leaving her mercifully alone.

What  _ is _ she doing here? she wonders as she locks the door and her fingers slip from the chill metal handle. She was simply supposed to figure out how to get Finn released, but now that straightforward plan has been shredded to hell by her desperate, savage fuck with his dark-eyed captor.

She double-checks that the door is secured and then moves to the toilet and quells her bodily needs. Her simple cotton panties are wrecked, and her heart catches in her ribs as she swipes her left thumb over her forefingers, confronting the telltale smear of blood.

Throughout all the strange turns of her life, pain has been her constant mentor. Now Kylo Ren is offering to become her agony incarnate.

_ You need a teacher, Rey. _

Tingles surge across nape of her neck in waves as her hairs stand on end, and her knees tremble as though shaken by thunder. Even the memory of his low voice is enough to make her grateful she’s still sitting down.

There’s nothing to be done to salvage the panties, so she kicks off her half-shin boots and pants and slips out of them. She pats the stained fabric as dry as she can before tucking them into the pocket of her jacket. It’s a lucky thing they absorbed most of Kylo’s cum, leaving her black-and-violet leggings still wearable — and she pulls the skin-tight fabric back up over her bare hips, jamming her feet back into her boots before flushing and turning to wash her hands.

She starts a little at the unfamiliar reflection, so different now than when she glanced at herself before heading out the door at home. Her clothes are the same as she was expecting, of course, and even the physical symmetry of her face is unchanged — but there’s something in her own gaze that frightens her. A shadow darkens her sterling eyes, as though deep within she’s already hardening from Kylo's harsh ministrations, her soft flesh tempering to iron.

Phasma knocks at the door, each sharp punctuation of her fist dripping with contempt. “Thirty seconds.”

Rey doesn’t care; she’s done here anyway, and opens the door fifteen seconds early just to spite the tall woman. It’s hard to hide her smirk at Phasma’s transparent disappointment that she didn’t get to break the door down.

“This way.”

Rey unquestioningly follows Phasma through still more tortuous black hallways, but her heartbeat quickens as the Amazonian guard stops before another anonymous door and opens it. This time Phasma doesn’t try to enter, though, but merely steps aside, tossing her head toward the mawing doorway to indicate Rey should continue through alone.

The high-ceilinged room beyond the doorway holds a long conference table of smoked glass, and some chairs clustered about it in regular intervals. The corners of the space have been angled off, rendering it a narrow octagon, and the lustrous black walls are split by a horizontal channel of light that runs about the room like a chair rail. It’s quiet and cool, like a sliver of obsidian.

After a lifetime of desert sun, Rey can’t help but love it.

Kylo is at the far end, leaning against the far end of the table like a wraith. His head snaps up as she enters, and his intense gaze smolders at Rey, stirring her core as she drifts toward him and his companion.

The man who sits beside him is pale-skinned, with hair that glints like spun straw and a ferretlike demeanor that draws her attention even from the magnetic Kylo. She recognizes him, but from  _ where  _ eludes her — and the not-quite-stranger regards her with mild scorn before turning back to a glowing panel on the table before him.

The smoked glass is a giant touchscreen, Rey notes as she watches the pale man prodding at the conference table. His fingers move deftly over the flat surface, threading boxes of text through each other like pieces of a sliding puzzle, lips moving as he rereads lines to himself. He works quickly, precisely, and though the text is far too small for her to read it from this distance, Rey wonders if whatever he's editing has to do with her.

When it becomes clear Kylo isn’t going to be the first to speak, Rey summons her courage anew. “Are you going to release Finn now?”

“Almost. First, some conditions.” Kylo gestures to a seat at the head of the table, near his, and though Rey moves closer she doesn’t sit. His expression twists with irritation again as she shifts her weight from one booted foot to another. “This is going to take a while, so I’d appreciate your full attention.”

Rey scowls back at him. “I don’t stand with my ears.”

His mouth twitches as though he’s fighting back a smile, but then his expression smoothes again. “ _ Sit _ .”

He isn’t leaving her any choice — and Rey grimaces as she throws herself down in the seat he’s indicated, leaving him alone on his feet.

“Hux.”

“Yes, sir.” The pale man’s fingers dance over the controls spread before him, and then he glances back at his surly employer. “The document is finished, and the system is online.”

Kylo nods. “Then get out.”

Hux snaps crisply to his feet and makes his way toward the door Phasma ushered Rey through, untroubled by Kylo’s sharp tone. She catches another glimpse of the powerful woman’s face in the shadowed corridor, but then both she and the pale man are lost to sight as the door closes again.

Kylo seems to relax with their departure, and his gaze returns to Rey, flickering over her like fire. He drags his forefinger across the table, reorienting the glowing control panel before him. A pale smirk twists his lips.  “Do you want to see how nervous you are?”

He nudges the digital window, sliding it toward her, and it snaps into place directly in front of her as though the table senses her presence. Not that she’s a med specialist, but she can recognize that the surging lines are human vital signs — and she jumps, looking wildly about for whatever monitors are currently spying on her body. “How are you doing this?”

“It’s the room.” He jerks his head skyward, indicating the tomblike chamber. “Convenient for making sure someone’s telling the truth.”

“I’m not a liar, if that’s what you’re saying,” Rey snaps.

Kylo straightens, that almost-smirk teasing his lips as he watches her. “I don’t want you to keep things from me as we negotiate — even things you keep from yourself. So even if you lie with your words, your body will be honest.”

“I already told you I’d stay with you!”

“Yes. But I want you to know  _ exactly  _ what you’re getting yourself into before you make that promise.” Kylo strides around the table toward Rey like a panther, confident of his advantage, and brings his face dangerously closer to hers as he leans against it. “I want to have your full consent, no turning back.” He reaches out to her slowly, as though mesmerized, and she quivers in her seat as his fingertips skate along her neck, exploring her tender skin. His voice is hypnotic, lulling her into surrender. “I want you to belong to me completely ... and that means sewing up every possible loophole you have to escape from me. Now. Before it’s too late.”

Kylo’s thumb and middle finger press against her neck, testing her. His strong hand can almost encircle her windpipe, but he only caresses her again and then withdraws, slipping out of her reach. He takes the seat beside hers, his control window sliding around the perimeter of the smoked glass table to follow him like a faithful hound. “Shall we begin?”

Rey can only nod, speechless, as they stare at each other and her sex throbs with renewed hunger.

“Rey…” Kylo snaps his wrist, and another series of digital windows bloom on the wall opposite them. She’s never seen her and Finn’s apartment building from this angle before, so it takes her a moment to recognize it — but then she sees Finn trotting across the stoop to meet Poe and Rose. A rectangle at the center of the display moves to focus on a third-storey window, where a pale crescent of a face slips from sight.  _ Her _ face. “So lonely, but so afraid to leave your safe hideout.”

Rey’s skin prickles with warning. “You’ve been spying on me?”

Kylo doesn’t even flinch at her pique. “I like to stay informed about my enemies and their associates. It’s how I knew you were a person worth dealing with.”

His condescension is stinging. “Is that supposed to make me feel honored?”

“Quite the opposite.”

“Regardless of what Finn did, a decent person wouldn’t have brought me here just to demean me.”

“But you know I’m not a decent man. And still, you didn’t call the police — you came here to me instead.” Kylo inclines his head, studying her — and for a moment his expression becomes seems so tender that she feels like she’s about to shatter, like glass beneath a fingertip. “A decent man wouldn’t have fucked you after a few minutes. A decent man wouldn’t know that you want  _ this _ .”

To Rey’s horror, the vids in the scattered windows change to a host of familiar images. She’s always so careful to do  _ that _ sort of Internet browsing anonymously, giving Finn no reason to suspect the sort of depravity she seeks out on her own computer — but somehow Kylo has found her favorites. She stares down at the smoked glass conference table, mortified by even the suggestion of the bound, writhing women in her peripheral vision.

“I told you, your lips will lie to me. Your body can’t,” Kylo murmurs. The multihued waveforms pulse before her, betraying her secret desires even as he lays the pornographic vids, pictures, and stories bare on his wall. The collage is a testament to her own depravity. “ _ This _ is what you want. It’s what you deliberately search for, over and over again.”

Humiliated tears sting Rey’s eyes, and the dark room quavers before her. Suddenly she remembers where she knows Kylo’s pale associate from. He’d been wearing the same uniform all the service technicians wore; if not for her aggravation that their tenuous ’net connection was down yet again, she wouldn’t have even poked her head out into the hallway and seen his face. Admittedly, their service has been far more reliable since then — but it seems that's come at a terrible cost.

The breath catches in Rey’s throat. If he’s been monitoring her Internet activity, he knows everything about her. Absolutely everything. He’ll have seen past the individual daydreams she’s collected to find the thread that connects them.

He knows her secret.

“Does Finn know you’re a masochist?” Kylo asks quietly.

The word is unbearable — and Rey writhes in her seat, unable to meet his gaze. “Don’t call me that!”

“But it’s what you are. Just as I’m a sadist.” Kylo moves quickly, sliding forward in his chair as his hand darts out to knot in her hair and coax a gasp of distress from her lips. “Why wouldn’t you tell him that?”

“Because it’s not true.”

“Don’t insult me, Rey. I know better, I’ve seen the proof myself — and I enjoyed it, too.” The strange man watches her, captivated, as he ever-so-slightly tightens his grip and she squirms in anguished response. “You want to submit to someone — and you’re clever. Tough.” He lifts his chin, staring down at her like a young Hades. “You’re special.”

Special. How can he be so twisted to think that her dark longings make her  _ special? _

He runs his thumb along her jaw, let it slip down to the hollow of her throat. “‘You deserve to belong to someone worthy for your training.”

“And you think that’s  _ you? _ ” Rey snarls through gritted teeth, desperate to ignore the way her biosignal surges in response to his harsh touch. The pleasurable cramping deep in her belly is impossible enough to endure without seeing it lying bare before her, too.

He only laughs, and his eyes flit to the wall again. “You seem to think so.”

_ Those _ vids fill the screen, the most incriminating ones. The ones she’d do anything to stop him from seeing. Not that he’s unfamiliar with them, of course, because he’s the star — and amid her horrified cringing, she thinks she catches that glint of a smile cross his face again as he releases her. It pleases him to know he’s a piece of the tapestry she’s assembled in sacrifice to that dark demon inside her, the one that claims her hellish dreams — and he’s saved this revelation for last, wringing the wretched truth from her like a master.

Kylo waves a dismissive hand and the wall vids fade into nothingness. Only then can Rey swallow back her unshed tears, and bring herself to look at the digital window he slides before her. The one Hux was working on before his unceremonious dismissal. “These are the terms under which I’ll accept you as my submissive, in exchange for Finn’s freedom.”

It’s a contract — and she skims it quickly, astonished by a hundred things all at once. “When did coercion become legally binding?”

“This isn’t coercion, it’s business. Supply and demand.” Kylo gazes coolly back at Rey, ready to claim his tribute.  _ Her _ . “And it might be legally unenforceable, but if you break our agreement, there's certainly nothing to stop me from turning over evidence of your friend’s crimes to the district attorney. Those consequences are real enough.”

Rey sits back in her chair, stubbornly refusing to keep reading the blasted document. Watching the leaked vids from his dungeon was one thing, but she has no wish to become his next guest star. “How many of these have you had women sign? Ten? Twenty?”

Kylo shifts, her question visibly disconcerting him. “This particular document is unique.”

“Unique.” She stares at him, her stomach shuddering with something on the verge of terror and pleasure as she consider the word. “Unique  _ how? _ ”

He gestures to the now-dark wallscreen. “They were my partners for a night. But you, Rey … you’re going to belong to me a lot longer than that.” He scrolls through the contract with a graceful finger, indicating clauses. “To the outside world you’ll be like any of my other employees. You’ll work for me around the clock, here in my home.”

“Work for you...” Rey hisses mirthlessly.

To her surprise, Kylo dips his head in a nod. “That much, at least, won’t be secret. I’ll show you your duties tomorrow morning, they’re real enough — and rest assured, I’ll make use of your considerable intelligence.”

The odd compliment catches Rey off-guard, and she folds her arms over her chest, regarding him dubiously. She’s always tinkering around at odd jobs for people, modding drones into mobile street art units and other illicit work that’s enough to keep her scraping by. But a job, proper or otherwise, isn’t something that ever seemed likely, much less worth considering. “What else does this contract of yours say?”

“You’re not allowed to leave here without my explicit permission.”

She resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Even if I  _ did _ drink your crazy juice and agree to this insanity, I’d have to go back home to get my things.”

Kylo looks genuinely puzzled. “Like what?”

“Like…” She laughs in nervous disbelief. How is this confusing for him? “My clothes. My computer. My  _ birth control _ , for fuck’s sake!”

“I’ll provide clothes for you — or not, if that’s my whim.” Kylo leans forward and hooks his fingers around the outsides of Rey’s knees, slowly turning to face him. “Hux will get your computer, but you’ll migrate the data to one that’s secure. It can be yours, I won’t pry. And as for birth control... “ His hands slip up the outsides of her thighs, magma-hot through her leggings as he tugs her to the edge of her chair. “My personal doctors are among the best in the world in the world. I’ll have someone stop by in the morning.” He pauses, thinking. “You can miss one dose, can’t you?”

He’s not wrong — but it makes her lightheaded to think about the consequences of that kind of miscalculation. “I-I’ve already taken it today.”

Kylo nods. “That solves that, then.”

“What am I supposed to tell Finn?” she mumbles, her lips numb as the gravity of the situation hits her like a cement avalanche.

“You can tell him that you work for me — and that it’s a round-the-clock  _ tech _ position,” Kylo amends quickly.

“But really I’ll be your prisoner.”

He tilts his head to the side, the tendrils of his dark hair rippling under the room’s strange lights. “You’ll be my guest.”

“ _ Why? _ ” Rey breathes, searching his expression for any trace of concealed humor — but he isn’t joking. “What you’re asking me, it’s … it’s  _ impossible _ , you have to know that!”

Kylo leans forward, taking her left hand in both of his. “It’s unreasonable, not impossible.”

His face is all there is in the world for her; his dark eyes are her only hope for salvation. “But why  _ me? _ ”

“I want the OSF off my back,” Kylo says carefully as he withdraws. Can he see the waveforms of her disappointment surging like a stormy sea, or is he as completely absorbed in her as he seems? “They’re less likely to lash out at me with someone as innocent as you close by.”

“But they’ll know,” Rey insists as Kylo releases her hand and stands, leaning against the back of her chair and looming over her. “They’ll have to guess what you’re doing to me, keeping me here.”

“They’ll suspect, but they won’t have proof. And your continued presence will prevent anything like tonight’s disruption from happening again.”

It’s an excuse — one that can’t possibly have merit. She’s no one; she’s nothing. From all Finn’s ballyhooing about the OSF, she’d stand as much of a chance warding them off as an idle thought. Yet the way he stares so intently at her is like the way she sees him — as though everything else is falling away, leaving them in an endless, star-strewn void.   


“I agree to all of this and you let Finn go home tonight?” she asks softly as he encroaches on her, pressing her back against her seat. She wants to agree, but his closeness makes it hard to think clearly, and she needs to be sure she isn’t damning herself for no reason.

He nods. “You have my word. And Rey?”

She loves the way Kylo says her name, like a sigh he’s reluctant to set free. “Y-Yes?”

“ _ My _ Rey,” he breathes, so close that his words imprint themselves on her lips. “Tell me that you’re mine. I want to hear you say it.”

If she’s truly agreeing to this, she may as well start obeying him now. “I’m y-yours,” she manages — but the words sound grudging and quiet amid the tomblike space.

“You hate me already,” Kylo murmurs, his grim amusement corroding her soul like acid. His dark eyes probe her, threatening to lay bare everything she’s feared about herself as he smiles palely again. “But that’s all right. I can work with that.”

Does she hate him? If so it can’t be completely, because Rey finds herself leaning forward to kiss him, her mouth finding his to seal her deal with the demon that is Kylo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now Rey OFFICIALLY belongs to Kylo, so it's time to get Finn away from the penthouse and to safety! But of course nothing's going to go as smoothly as Rey hopes — and the one thing she's held back from Kylo will be brought to light, with immediate (and sexy) consequences.
> 
> *squee!*
> 
> If ya wanna, catch up with me on Twitter @elegygoldsmith, where I post about when new chapters are dropping! I'm looking for some advance readers for some original New Adult (aka sexy stuff) alternate universe/sci-fi/fantasy novels and short stories, so if you have some free time, are 18+, and can read quickly, hmu!
> 
> Also, if you SIMPLY CANNOT WAIT for a new chapter, I wrote a book boyfriend called EOS, which is free on Smashwords! Altair is very Kylo-ish and will keep you company until the next chapter drops on Friday ;)
> 
> THANKS FOR READING!!


	3. Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Finn, it’s not what you think,” Rey barks, trying to distract him from the lancing glare he’s leveling at Kylo. This much, at least, she can say plainly. “He didn’t force me to do anything, this is what I chose. Trading me for you.”
> 
> “What is _wrong_ with you?” Finn howls — and as he yanks at her arm, pulling her toward the door, a soft bundle of cotton falls from her pocket to the floor.
> 
> He’s faster than she is, snatching up the cloth before Rey even thinks to claim it.
> 
> “Wait, are these-”
> 
> Rey grabs her panties back and shoves them back into her jacket pocket, glaring at Finn as her cheeks blaze guiltily. “That’s none of your fucking business!”
> 
> “But you and he-” Finn begins hotly, but he breaks off, livid hatred flickering in his eyes.
> 
> “She’s not a virgin anymore,” Kylo supplies calmly, his words casting the dungeon into icy silence like a spell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember how Rey didn't tell Kylo she was a virgin?
> 
> Kylo is _not_ the kind of Dom to keep secrets from. And Rey's about to find that out the hard way.
> 
> There are few things more painful than pleasure...

The floor below the penthouse must belong to Kylo, too, Rey realizes as he leads her down a dark, winding staircase to a set of halls even more ominous than those on the storey above. The air has a sharper tang down here, as though those who came before her paid their passage down these steps in liquid fear.

She shivers as they sink deeper into the shadowy corridors. Terrible things have happened here — things that would make others squirm. The same things that made her press her hands to her own sex to stifle its shuddering need when she watched them online.

The room Kylo leads them to is surprisingly barren, the otherwise humble space broken by a metal cell that could comfortable hold two people. A security camera’s ruby eye glints from the dark recesses of a corner; thanks to its panoptical gaze Rey has seen the cage before, if under very different circumstances.

Finn is the first man she’s ever seen locked behind its sturdy iron bars — and, mercifully, he’s still fully clothed. If he knows anything about that other side of Kylo, the one that’s hidden from newspapers and their cameras, he’s never mentioned it to Rey. That will make what’s to come at least marginally easier.

“Rey!” Finn’s expression alternates between relief and fury as he throws himself against the cage’s bars, probably anxious to give her one of his infamous bear hugs. Rage seizes his features as his jumpy gaze settles on Kylo. “I swear to god, if you’ve touched one hair on her head — I mean it, a  _ single one _ -”

“As you can see, she’s fine,” Kylo snaps as he retrieves a credit card-shaped key from his pocket and swipes the cell open. “But then  _ she  _ knocked at my front door rather than breaking in.”

Finn shoves his way out of the cell and hurls himself bodily between Rey and Kylo, glancing wildly between them like he’s not sure whether to protect or attack. Rey lets out a shaky sigh of relief; his stint in this dungeon has left him none the wiser as to its true purpose. Finn’s hatred for Kylo would be razor-keen if he knew the sorts of things the dark man has done to women who found their way into that cage.

“Rey, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she answers quickly. “Look — everything’s going to be all right, he’s letting you go.”

“Letting me…” Finn twitches his head from side to side in disbelief as he glowers at his former captor. “Uh-uh. No way  _ he _ does something like that without getting something in return.”

“I got exactly what I wanted,” Kylo counters quietly as he replaces the card key in his pocket.

Rey flings a glare at him like a dagger. That cool tone notwithstanding, beneath it he’s gloating, smugly goading Finn. Even though her contract with him forbids mentioning that she belongs to him now, on some level he  _ wants _ Finn to suspect what’s happening, and to carry those suspicions back to the OSF. For all his talk of secrets, Kylo wants to show off his possession of her.

If only she could tell her best friend what she’s had to do to secure this moment of freedom for him. But she’s already signed the contract, thumbprinting a succession of lines that have guaranteed her silence. She took her time reading the document before making her mark, and its clauses were exacting. Everything related to her new role as Kylo’s submissive is strictly off-limits.

“So we’re cool?” Finn’s disbelief of his newfound freedom eases enough for him to face Rey completely, and he straightens from his bent-legged stance. “What did he want?”

“H-He hired me,” she says. It’s not strictly a lie, but neither is it breaking her word to her new Dominant — and he gives her a barely-perceptible nod from over Finn’s shoulder.

Finn snorts with laughter, but his mirth fades as the seconds pass and she doesn’t join him. “Wait, you’re serious?”

She nods shakily.

“Rey, you can’t work for him. You just  _ can’t _ .” He gestures toward Kylo. “I’ve told you what he does to the companies KoR Tech buys. Why do you think he’d be any different to you?”

“Unlike him _ I  _ can actually appreciate your talents.” Kylo’s gaze blazes at her; even as he ignores Finn, her friend’s words are like the salt in some inner wound. “I won’t stand by and let you waste your days as nothing. You’re worth so much more than that.”

Rey’s stomach lurches as they stare at each other. There’s a violence to his words that shouldn’t make her weak at the knees, but the insides of her thighs quake in open rebellion.

“Don’t you talk to her! Don’t you  _ dare _ talk to her!” Finn shouts, his voice too loud amid the barren room’s close walls. He grabs Rey’s forearm and pulls her backward, far enough from Kylo for a semblance of privacy. “Why the fuck would you agree to work for him?” he hisses when they’re far enough away for his liking. “If you need steady work, why not just ask the OSF? I could’ve hooked you up!”

“Because you went and got yourself caught by him!” Rey snarls, shaking off his grip so forcefully that he stumbles backward. Indignant wrath seethes in her gut; how  _ dare _ he try to pretend as though his scrambled message had left her any options? “He was going to get you sent to jail for whatever you were up to — is that what you wanted?”

“Obviously not, but-”

“Then trust me, I did what I had to.” She draws herself up stiffly, finally seeing a way clear of this mess. Leaving Finn on his own is bad enough, especially where it’s so sudden and she doesn’t know when she’ll be back. Leaving him without the meager portion of rent she’s usually able to scrape together would be inexcusable. “I’m going to stay at his company’s quarters for a while. Take what you need from my stash to pay for the place. I’ll send more once I get my first paycheck.” Rey stares deliberately at Kylo as she says the last words, relieved as he gives her another faint but discernible nod. If he  _ is _ going to have her work for him, properly in addition to her more sordid duties, then he can arrange to make at least that much up to her.

“Where are you staying?”

“I’ll let you know when I’m settled.”

“Rey-”

She shoves her balled fists into her jacket pockets as Finn catches hold of her arm once again. His eyes are narrowed in commingled anger and confusion; it must be unfathomable to him why she’s abruptly agreed to work for an enemy he so openly loathes. It would be like  _ him _ driving all the way back to Nevada to work for Unkar Plutt. But there’s no way to truly explain why she’s staying with Kylo, not without throwing Finn’s entire release into jeopardy — so she shrugs. “He’s not as bad as you think.”

“And how long do you think his nice-guy act is going to last when he finds out you’re still a virgin?” Finn hisses, incensed.

“ _ Finn! _ ” she shrieks, but it’s too late.

Kylo visibly stiffens at Finn’s none-too-quiet words, his full lips parting as though he’s had the wind knocked out of him.

Fuck.

“See? Look at him!” Ignorant to what’s happening as Finn is, he clearly he believes Kylo’s reaction just proved his fears right. “I’ve heard things about him too horrible to even tell you, Rey, you  _ have _ to believe me.”

In his fury he has it wrong, backwards. She wants to remind him that there are whole comment threads devoted to the rumors of Kylo turning virgins away — but then she’d also have to explain how she knows that fact. And why she ever cared to know it.

Rey can’t even imagine what Kylo is thinking, but he looks positively ashen. His hands tremble beside his legs and he clenches his fingers, vainly trying to control the tremors as he glowers at her. He’s on the brink of something truly awful — and Rey is suddenly grateful that all the tools and trinkets of pain that usually line this room are nowhere to be seen.

“Finn, it’s not what you think,” Rey barks, trying to distract him from the lancing glare he’s leveling at Kylo. This much, at least, she can say plainly. “He didn’t force me to do anything, this is what I chose. Trading me for you.”

“What is  _ wrong _ with you?” Finn howls — and as he yanks at her arm, pulling her toward the door, a soft bundle of cotton falls from her pocket to the floor.

He’s faster than she is, snatching up the cloth before Rey even thinks to claim it.

“Wait, are these-”

Rey grabs her panties back and shoves them back into her jacket pocket, glaring at Finn as her cheeks blaze guiltily. “That’s none of your fucking business!”

“But you and he-” Finn begins hotly, but he breaks off, livid hatred flickering in his eyes.

“She’s not a virgin anymore,” Kylo supplies calmly, his words casting the dungeon into icy silence like a spell.

Finn lunges for Kylo, but Rey is faster, rebuffing him and sending him sprawling against the outside of the cage. 

“ _ Go home _ , Finn,” Rey shouts, her sharp voice cutting through his. It’s twisting the knife in her heart to be so cold to him, but she doesn’t have time for his noble meddling now. She’s made her proverbial bed, and from the expression on Kylo’s face she’s going to have a fair bit to contend with yet tonight sleeping in it. “I’m fine, I promise, and I’ll talk to you later — but you have to leave.  _ Now _ .”

“Why? Because he says so?”

“Because  _ I _ say so!” she snarls. Her heart hammers insistently at her collarbone as Kylo’s obsidian stare bores into her. Fear grips her belly in glassine talons: is he going to kick her out, too, for keeping her innocence from him? “I’m an adult, and regardless of what you think, every so often I’m capable of making my own decisions!”

“I can’t believe you,” Finn mutters. “Y’know, sometimes your decisions really suck.”

“Then at least they’re mine.”

Finn stares at her for a long moment, and shakes his head. “Fine, have it your way. But don’t come crying to me for hen everything goes to shit.”

Then he’s gone, finding his own way out of the room and leaving Rey alone with Kylo.

Rage burns her throat at the unfairness of it all, but she swallows back briny tears. She’s furious, but she didn't reveal what Kylo is to her. She kept her word.

Kylo taps his smart watch. “Have someone escort him out.”

“Acknowledged,” comes Phasma’s tinny reply.

Silence fills Rey’s ears like water as Kylo stares at her, still frozen. When he finally speaks, his voice is leaden. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She lifts one shoulder in a lopsided shrug. “You didn’t ask.”

He shakes his head — and in the next moment he’s beside her, catching her up in his arms and throwing her over his shoulder so that her legs kick wildly in the air.

“What are you doing?” Rey splutters as he strides back toward the stairs leading upward, his broad shoulder biting into her stomach — and a shriek tears itself from her lips as he lands a stinging slap on her legging-covered ass.

Even from this awkward angle she can see the ruddy blush creeping from beneath his collar. His syllables are clipped with fury. “Giving you your first punishment.”

“For  _ what?” _

“For not being forthcoming.”

“I didn’t lie!” she protests fiercely. It’s unjust — he’s holding her to account like that was somehow part of their bargain. She wriggles, but his arm is chained about her thighs, inescapable. “And if it’s so important to you, why wasn’t that in your stupid bloody contract?”

“You  _ omitted _ . Coming here and offering yourself to me…” He shakes his head, strangely shaken. “I assumed you knew what you were doing, what sort of man I was. What if I’d wanted to fuck you in the ass? I could’ve hurt you.”

She shivers against him at the thought of that sordid a transgression. “You wouldn’t dare do that.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“The contract said-”  Rey croaks, but her voice fails her as he swiftly plops her back onto the ground before him, raising his voice to overrule her.

“The  _ contract  _ said I wouldn't fuck you in the ass unless I've properly prepared you. And believe me, I intend to.” Kylo’s face is inches from hers, his coal-dark eyes cold with fury as he gazes at her. “Now more than ever. But tonight I’ve got a different lesson to instill in you.”

His peace spoken, he picks her up again, this time cradling her against his chest. She struggles against him, but it’s no use; his grip on her is complete, and all she can do is wear herself out like a wave spending itself against a rocky shoreline. 

“That’s right, keep fighting,” he taunts her quietly, heat radiating from his body like a dark star as he pins her against him. “You’re only making it easier for me.”

His grip betrays how much he wants her — and she squirms again, biting back a grin at the way he anticipates each movement. His determination to possess her is intoxicating, and her head swims woozily as his heartbeat slams against her shoulder.

Suddenly Phasma and Hux are suddenly waiting at the side of the corridor as though Kylo summoned them. “Secure the compound,” he tells them sharply as he sweeps past. “Don’t bother me unless it’s an emergency.”

Any answers the pale duo might make are swallowed up in the slam of the door closing between them, and then Rey’s alone with Kylo again, her panting breaths strange in this new space. If this is his bedroom, it’s far more spartan than she could’ve anticipated, with bare black walls bisected by a horizontal light. It almost looks like a larger version of that bugged conference room, but in place of the table, here a large bed stands waiting in a corner. A door is inset in the far wall, but it’s closed, betraying no sign of where it leads.

This might be larger than that dungeon chamber downstairs, but it’s a cell all the same.

Kylo sets her down again in the middle of the room, eyeing her even as she crosses her arms over her chest in protest.

“No view of the city here,” she observes tightly, refusing to acknowledge the bed and the implicit threat it represents.

He jerks his head toward what must be the building’s exterior and the city beyond. “Things in this room are meant for my eyes, not theirs.” 

Rey peers at Kylo for a long moment, trying to understand him. Her longing for him complicates things, coiling between them and binding them like a barbed vine.

“Strip.”

Frowning at him is instinctive. “What?”

Kylo slips out of his jacket and folds it in half, casting it aside on the floor before his attention returns to Rey. He unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt, rolling them up to the elbow as he speaks. “I was in too much of a hurry before to even look at you properly. Now I want to enjoy myself.” He waits a moment, and when she doesn’t respond, adds, “I mean it. Strip naked.”

Can he seriously want her again this soon? Rey’s fingers fly to the zippered edges of her jacket, numbly pulling the garment off and letting it fall aside as her heartbeat threatens to unbalance her. Kylo doesn’t seem to be undressing, though; he’s just standing there watching as she fumbles her way out of her boots, nearly falling in her haste to kick them aside.

“So what’s this lesson you’re supposed to be teaching me?” Rey asks to distract from her rising panic. She claws her tunic up over her shoulders, tossing it aside to join her jacket. He’s been  _ inside _ her, for fuck’s sake, mere nakedness should hold no terror for her now. In this place there are more deserving things to fear. The room isn’t even that bright, the light diffuse soft enough to be forgiving — but still her hands shake as she twists her arms behind her back and unhooks the clasp of her bra.

“The lesson is, don’t hold anything back from me.” Kylo’s voice is ragged with warning, and his eyes are fixed on the loose black fabric cups as he impatiently waits for her to pull them aside. “Don’t think you can manipulate me, because there will be consequences when I find out.”

The dark man strides closer to her, until his body eclipses everything the strange room and the ominous bed. He hooks his index finger through the strap of her bra and tugs gently, urging her to lower it of her own accord.

“And I will  _ always  _ find out.”

Rey rolls her shoulders, shyly letting her bra drop, and crouches a little as she pulls down her leggings, using her bent knees to hide her body. But then the last of her armor is gone, and she flattens her hands against her belly as she stands upright, letting him stare at her naked form.

Her body is lean, hard, the curves tight with well-conditioned muscles. Kylo's gaze slides over her skin greedily, lingering on the firm mounds of her breasts and the sheen of close-cropped hair at the apex of her thighs.

The floor is chill against her bare soles, and it’s a relief when Kylo finally steps back and holds out his hand to her. She takes it gratefully, trying to ignore the almost-painful pinching of her nipples as they harden in the flawlessly conditioned air.

He leads her to the bed, but to her surprise he gestures to the foot of it. “Sit here.”

Shivers rack Rey’s spine as she wordlessly does as he’s indicated. Her sex pulses with anticipation, sending wanton cramps deep into her belly. It seems like he’s going to stand beside the bed and fuck her, but her heart sags as he moves away, slipping out sight past her peripheral vision.

“Don’t move.”

Rey gasps quietly as Kylo seats himself behind her, wrapping his legs outside and a little under hers, and pulling her against him so that his back warms her chest. His stubble scrapes her cheekbone as he drags his splayed hands over her belly, pushing them higher to clutch her bare breasts and make her sigh with wanting. His trousers are forgiving enough against her skin, but the  _ wrongness _ of his being fully clothed while she’s so vulnerable to him makes her lightheaded with lust.

“What an unexpected pleasure you are, Rey,” Kylo growls in her ear, his breath tickling her cheek. He rolls her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, plucking ecstasy within her like a harp. “You just fell into my lap, like you were meant to be here all along.”

“I thought you were going to punish me,” she mutters through her body’s dizzying madness.

“Punishment comes in all kinds of forms.” He nuzzles into the side of her neck, urging a tiny cry from her unprepared lips as one of his hands drives between her legs, finding her still-sore sex and moving in achingly slow circles. “Believe me, you’ll learn to hate me for this.”

She arches her spine, overwhelmed by the sensations his touch awakens, but he holds her fast against his lithe frame. His seemingly arbitrary positioning of her body was secretly genius; her feet are dangling too far above the floor to find purchase, and he has her at his utter mercy as she squirms against him, panting.

“What— Why-” she manages between strangled breaths.

“You tried to deny me.” The buttons of Kylo’s shirt tease the knobs of her spine as he works his first two fingers into her quim, thumbing her clit as his other hand finds its way to catch her throat. “Now I’m going to deny you for as long as I want.  _ That’s _ your punishment.”

Rey is beginning to see how he calls it that now. He’s awakening such rapture in her affection-starved nerves, but her quim hasn't forgotten the way he ravaged her just an hour ago, and it resists this beautifully rough treatment. 

Kylo teases her earlobe with his teeth, laughing softly as she shrieks and writhes. She’s utterly powerless in his embrace as he wrenches a third finger into her cunt, sinking deep inside her as she vainly struggles to close her knees. “You’re so wet, Rey, you’re begging for it.” 

Sore and already used as she is, it doesn’t take long for the blinding edge to rise within her — but just as she’s about to slide over the crest into oblivion Kylo stops, pulling away from her so abruptly that she cries out with frustration.

“It isn’t nice to have someone voluntarily withhold things from you, is it?” he chides, his voice mocking her as she convulses with deprivation.

Distraught as she is, Rey can hardly remember how to speak. “Why … the hell ... do you care?”

“I would’ve taken my time with you. I  _ should’ve _ .” He lifts her breasts against her, teasing her stiffened peaks until she moans again. “So I’m going to make up some of that lost time right now, until you admit why you kept that from me.”

She hasn’t realize it until this moment, but some part of her was still afraid he would turn her away, tear up the agreement because of what Finn revealed. Yet knowing that he’s going to keep her here, that there truly is no escaping him now, makes her buck wildly for fear of whatever he means to do next.

“You were so tight,” he muses into the nape of her neck, sending shivers through her shoulders as the tip of his nose kisses her hair. “So eager for me to be inside you.”

She hates him knowing exactly how hungry she was for his body, and lording it over her like this. Suddenly she  _ does _ hate him for his vicious teasing — and she flails, gritting her teeth to try to block out the rapture he’s sending screaming through her nerves with every stroke. “I’ll bet you wish that, don’t you?”

The shell of her ear prickles with the warmth of his breath. “I don’t have to wish.”

He waits until she’s ceased her violent thrashing and then begins anew, hooking his fingers into her pussy with practiced ease, surging inside her in a ruthless mockery of fucking her. The sounds that echo through the room are wet and stomach-churning — but he only presses her harder, again stopping short of ecstasy as her body twitches and quickens.

Rey mewls with her freshly thwarted lust, but Kylo only laughs cruelly. “Don’t you wish I’d just end all this teasing and fuck you again?”

“Yes,” she begs, anger fading in the face of her desire again — and the whimpering catch in her voice is so humiliating that she falls silent.

“If only it was that easy.” Kylo sighs with feigned reluctance. He ducks his head to murmur into her neck: “But I want you to suffer, Rey. I want to feel every shiver as you learn what it means to disobey me. So I have to be patient, too.”

She feels his erection throbbing against the curve of her ass, and she blindly reaches for him, but he snatches his hands away to catch her wrists, crossing them before her body and incapacitating her. 

“Dick is for good girls,” he rumbles in her ear, his unforgiving voice barely more than a whisper, “and you’ve been bad to me, Rey. No more of that for you tonight. Not until you learn to behave.”

It’s too much. She sags against him, nearly out of her mind with need for him as he palms her sex, his free arm tightening about her waist to quell her feeble struggling. Kylo’s cock is like a steel bar against the swell of her ass, taunting her, and she can hear him gritting his teeth as he gets control of himself, still refusing to fuck her.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?” His voice is gravelly, and he teases her slick folds with his fingertips, flirting with putting her out of her misery. His touch studiously avoids her cleft and her clit, even as she instinctively undulates her body to bring him closer. “Answer me or I’ll make this last all night.”

“I  _ wanted _ … to do it … with you…” Rey whimpers, breaking off into a sobbing  _ ngahhh _ as he comes close, only to leave her unfulfilled yet again.

“Instead of just asking me, you assumed — and you tried to trick me. I could’ve taken my time, prepared you. And instead…” He catches her hand and draws it along him, his wicked length pulsing beneath her fingers. “I violated you with hardly any warning. All of this went inside you.”

“Yes,” she sighs gratefully, pressing herself against him as his fingers tighten on her naked body.

“It had to’ve hurt.” He draws one hand along the flat of her lower belly, “Only a truly depraved kind of woman would like being treated like that.”

She nods, whimpering, so lost that it feels like she might burst into tears. The fear of it, the shame has loomed over her life like a thunderhead. 

“You’re undisciplined right now, but I’ll make you strong. Fearless.” He nuzzles into her hair, sending goosebumps rippling along the nape of her neck. “No one’s ever tested you, but I’ll find your limits.”   
Rey is too far gone to speak. The guttural moans that emerge from her lips are from some other Rey, a dark Rey, one that’s been asleep inside her for longer than she can remember.   


But now that other Rey is awake. It scares her to feel whatever she’s becoming, but she can’t stop herself from clinging to the raven-haired man behind her, pressing herself as close to him as their bodies will allow.

She needs him.

Kylo’s laugh is like a silken caress. “How’s my slutty little mistress feeling right now?”

“I’m not your mistress, you’re holding me prisoner,” Rey sobs, indignation flaring again at how easily he’s captured her like this. He’s enjoying toying with her. She tears at his wrist, but it’s like his arms were forged from steel — and he only presses against her harder, thumbing her pearl raw until she relents. “You’re torturing me, for fuck’s sake!”

“Why does it bother you so much that you willingly agreed to all this? You want to submit to me, but you’re ashamed of yourself for it.” He hitches her closer, his free hand clutching at her body as he pulls her close. “I can feel the conflict inside you, Rey. Admit how much you wanted me to be the one to break you in.”

“No!” she mewls.

“Were you saving yourself for me?  _ Fuck _ …” Kylo shivers against her for a moment before regaining control. “Tell me, Rey, or I swear you won’t be able to walk straight for a week by the time I’m done with you.”

Rey is strong but Kylo’s stronger, easily caging her mutinous body against his with muscle-corded arms. The fabric of his clothes chafes against her bare skin, reminding her of how naked she is splayed across his lap like this.

“Please,” Rey begs, her voice quavering. “Please…”

“Please what?”

“I wanted this. I w-wanted  _ you _ ,” she whispers, ashamed to hear the words suddenly flowing out in her own wrecked voice. “I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to fuck me ... and I was scared you wouldn’t if I told you.”   


Rey knows Kylo’s pleased from the low rumble that shakes his chest. Suddenly he hooks his feet inside hers, spreading her wide as his soaked fingers work at her cunt, sinking into her as deep as he can. “It turns me on when you beg.”

Her trembling becomes tectonic, and she clutches at him as the gathered force of so much denial threatens to undo her utterly.

“It’s killing me not to fuck you right now.” Kylo’s voice is harsh against her, and her quim burns with his every intrusion. She can feel herself relaxing to admit him, whining at each rough swirl of his thumb. Rapture licks her ravaged sex like flames, and it’s only as something abrasive kisses her palm that she realizes she’s pressing her hand to his stubbled jaw, drawing him closer still. “Show me you’re sorry. Cum for me.”

“I can’t do it,” she whimpers as his insistent caresses push her toward extinction. Being close to the edge so long has made the hurricane mustering within her become truly terrifying. She can’t now let go and spiral into the maw of obliteration. “It’s too much, I can’t!”

“You can,” Kylo assures her, his voice buzzing pleasantly in her ear. He wraps one arm about her chest, pinning her forearms to her breasts. “You’re mine, and that means I’ve got you. I won’t let you break.”

“No-”

“Let go, Rey.” Kylo’s teeth graze the nape of her neck, and an animal scream tears itself from her lips as she falls apart in his embrace, her spine stiffening with brutal force. Her drenched channel clenches, and he swears lustily as she grips his intrusive fingers in shuddering spasms, driving deeper and cradling her body until she gradually stills.

“There, now,” he murmurs, kissing her shoulder.

Rey cries out as he extracts his fingers from her pussy and gently presses on the outsides of her knees, urging them closed. It makes the aftershocks of the orgasm easier to bear somehow — but the stickiness at the apex of her thighs is purely hers this time, undeniable proof of her longing for him.

He kisses her brow and twists her in his arms, hefting her against his chest as he stands. “Be forthcoming with me next time and I may be less inclined to torture you.” He chuckles, and it’s a golden, languid sound that trickles through her spent muscles, warming her. “Or  _ more  _ inclined. I can’t make any promises.”

Kylo walks around the bed to the side and lays Rey down, carefully tucking her body between the sheets with a tenderness those dark web vids never showed. The mattress holds her like a cloud, but razor-edged thoughts skitter through her head, nausea gathering in her gut as she thinks of Finn, and the expression of loathing that had twisted his features once he’d realized what she’d done with Kylo.

What she’s just endured was more shameful still … and yet again she’s exultant, simultaneously enamored and repulsed by how Kylo’s wrung her out, reducing her to her very core.

She saw it before, looking in his mirror. A seed of darkness, something she thought he planted within her during his first trespass. But it’s a darker, deeper, more ancient longing that he’s tapped into, a silken thread that’s passed through every moment of her life. The longing for pain in just the right measure.

The craving. One he’s the first person to have ever answered.

He tucks the blankets closer about her back, then the bed surges upward as he stands, freeing it of his lanky weight. The hushed whisper of straightening fabric breaks the silence, and then he bends over her, his dark hair tickling her cheek.

“Sleep tight, my girl,” Kylo murmurs, and he presses a chaste kiss to her forehead. “Don’t deny me again.”

The lights dim as his footsteps recede. Try as she might to cling to consciousness, Rey finds herself tumbling into shadow, and she surrenders to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Rey awakens for her first real full day as Kylo's submissive — and his labyrinthine apartment has more than a few surprises in store. This one's gonna be on the fluffy side, folks, but there'll be more BDSM-ly darkness to come soon after...
> 
> As a reminder (and this time with links!):  
> -Astronomer, time-traveler, and all-around sexpot Altair can be found in book boyfriend form in [EOS](https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/464610).  
> -If you're interested in advance reading a couple of smexy books, contact me on [my website](https://www.elegygoldsmith.com/contact)!
> 
> Also, if you liked anything particular in the chapter, please leave me a comment! I love chatting with fellow smutty nerds!
> 
> THANKS FOR READING!!!
> 
> <3


	4. Homework

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A faint smile touches Kylo's full lips, but then it’s gone again and Rey wonders if it was only her imagination. “You didn’t have to stand up to your friend for me the way you did, so I’d like to offer you something in return — your justification for being here. Think up a project. Anything you want to work on, whether in a lab or pure research, and I’ll provide you the resources to complete it.”
> 
> Rey’s mouth is suddenly dry, her heart hammering at the dessicated branches of her ribs. Is he serious? It’s the kind of opportunity a thousand tech interns would battle royale each other for, and yet he’s offering it to her.
> 
> “And speaking of research…” His countenance darkens in the recorded projection, his dark brow knitting above obsidian eyes. “I’ll be sending you a list. Review it, familiarize yourself with the terms, and follow the instructions. I expect a response from you no later than four o’clock.”
> 
> The sudden sharpness in his tone makes her jump. Suddenly this pale rendition of Kylo seems like a stern teacher talking about homework — and a frisson of inexplicable excitement shivers through her.
> 
> _You need a teacher, Rey._
> 
> She hadn’t realized he meant that literally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand we're back! Sorry about the hiatus, but it's totally time to delve into Rey's everyday life as Kylo's prisoner.
> 
> Because no mistake, he owns her now - and maybe not just her body ;)
> 
> Check out the story snippets from Kylo's perspective, beginning with [Midnight Special at Takodana](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15129119/chapters/35081435)!

Rey awakens alone.

She’s dizzy, disoriented. Her dreams are usually vivid enough that she can confuse them for memories, and right now is no exception. It’s certainly not the first time she’s imagined being with Kylo, but the knife-edged ache between her thighs and deep in her belly are undeniable this time. The soreness only becomes more acute as she drifts to full wakefulness, the memory of his touch becoming clearer rather than fading from her mind.

Did they really— Could he have-?

She forces herself to stop and consider the facts as she squints against the avalanche of morning sunlight. She’s in a bed.  _ Kylo’s _ bed, she remembers — or so she assumed it to be when he brought her here. It smells like him, although the scent only lingers faintly now; she remembers reaching for him in the night. Yet this can’t possibly be the black-walled chamber he violated her in last night, because a plunging view of the city lurks just beyond her pillow.

Rey yips in warning as she recoils, her heart thrumming like a mouse’s as she peeks down at the nauseating drop. It’s like waking up and finding herself at the apex of a roller coaster, with no sign of how she got there or why.

Her breaths are shallow, gasping things. The other two walls appear the same as she remembers, black and undifferentiated — and as she backs away from the illusory brink it slowly dawns on her that yes, she’s in the same room after all. Whether from digital trickery or some other magic, the two outermost walls have somehow become transparent. They’re floor-to-ceiling windows that were masquerading as opaque last night, though why they’ve now revealed their secret she can’t say.

Rey glances around, quickly taking stock of her surroundings. She’s alone in the room; the door she entered by last night is shut just like its mysterious double on the companion black wall. Is she a prisoner here? She certainly feels like one, on display to anyone who should happen to look up from the street or a nearby building. The thought of telescopes and binoculars, of  _ scrutiny _ , makes her shudder.

Terror exacerbates the thing that woke her in the first place: she has to use the bathroom again. If she’d thought the urgency was bad last night after Kylo fucked her, now the need is an animal snarling in her gut, clawing painfully at her abdomen from the inside out.

Adding insult to injury, her clothing is nowhere to be seen. There’s really nothing in this room apart from the bed and herself — and she peeks under the soft blankets, heart sinking as she confirms her own abject nakedness. Her clothes should be prominent lumps breaking the tranquil plane of the floor, but everywhere she looks her gaze is greeted with still more emptiness.

“What the  _ fuck? _ ” she whimpers furiously.

Pain snaps at her like a rabid dog and she winces, ripping the sheet free from its hold on the bed to wrap around her bare body.

“Hey.” Rey's voice rings against her own ears, but it's only followed by silence. She glances around; the ruby lights of Kylo’s security cameras seem much harder to find now that she's somehow stumbled into his clutches herself. Fury at him for just leaving her here without explanation claws at her throat. “Hey  _ asshole! _ ”

Mortification rushes through her cheeks like quicksilver. She's not far from having to make a truly horrible decision — and as she slips off the bed and hurries to first one nearly-seamless door and then the other, panic grips her throat, strangling her cry to a whine of terror. “ _ Shit! _ ”

Her fingertips tighten on the edge of the bed sheet, as though pulling the fabric tighter about her body can squeeze back what's burning inside her and seeking its own escape.

“I can't fucking piss myself in Kylo Ren’s bedroom,” she mutters under her breath, but the words echo back at her hollow, unconvinced, like a mockery of her determination. Surely a man like Kylo has seen worse, but Rey can't bear the idea of losing control like a child on her very first morning here.

She presses her thighs together with brutal force as she raises her voice: “ _ HELP! _ ”

The word works like a magic spell: the door to the corridor splits open, and she sighs in relief, even if it’s not the relief she really needs. At least she has a way out now — maybe she can find her way to wherever Phasma took her last night. Yet the hulking blonde woman is nowhere to be seen, the corridor beyond the room curiously empty.

Rey eyes the hallway in each direction, still clutching at her sheet to absorb the brunt of her discomfort. There's nothing to distinguish her choices of which way to go. Instinct tells her that the other door leading from Kylo's bedroom, the still-shut one, is barring the very place she's seeking, but there's no way to be sure.

She thinks she's hallucinating the distant thudding at first, like a cavalcade of velvet-covered hammers, but it grows louder as it nears until the floorboards vibrate under her naked soles. She yells in fright as the thing bursts into sight down the right side of the hallway, falling back into the bedroom to escape it — but it only follows her, skidding to an awkward stop as it rounds the corner.

It's a lucky thing she doesn't mess herself then and there, because the thing before her is certainly peculiar enough to warrant it. The robot stands as high as her chest, its narrow limbs and body arranged in such a way that it looks like a huge, lithe dog, a mecha greyhound curiously bereft of features like eyes or ears. Its body is wrought of lightweight metal or plasteel, and in place of paws its graceful legs terminate in rubbery, teardrop-shaped bulbs.

Rey gapes at the creature, her need momentarily forgotten in the face of such an elegant creation. This might be the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. It's like a human-wrought unicorn has suddenly waltzed into the room in answer to her cry.

The robotic dog unfurls a too-long neck, turning its semblance of a face toward her. “Oh, you're awake.” The voice is male, tinny, and though Rey knows she must be anthropomorphizing, it sounds sarcastic. “You slept longer than I anticipated you would.”

She squints up at it. Is that an insult? “I’m sorry, and you are…?”

“My name is K-2SO,” the robot answers, drawing itself up haughtily. “You’re Rey — I knew that already.”

“Oh.” It’s the only answer she can make as the primal need comes roaring back.

“I suppose you have to void yourself,” K-2SO says in that same slightly irritated tone, and then sighs heavily, as though her earthly needs are inconveniencing it. 

Rey’s anger slips through her fingers like sand as a fissure appears down the center of the second door, and it parts to reveal another black marble bathroom. She doesn’t even wait for the robot to say anything more but dashes to relieve herself, bare feet slapping on the floor as she hurtles toward the commode. Thank goodness it’s around a corner and out of sight from the sparse bedroom, because Rey’s too afraid of getting stuck in the bathroom to ask K-2SO to close the door behind her again.

That managed she’s able to think again, and refolds the sheet around herself, knotting the soft fabric at her waist and shoulder before reemerging so it won’t fall. The huge metal hound is still waiting for Rey in the bedroom, and its featureless face swivels toward her as she pads forward, eyeing the twin window-walls with trepidation.

“It’s just a projection.” Rey feels like she’s about to fall as the view of the city sudden shivers and then fades back to black, leaving the room as it looked last night. For an illusion, it was a convincing one — and for a coded personality, K-2SO certainly seems pleased with himself. “There are only a few proper windows on either floor. Master Kylo prefers his privacy.”

“I can imagine,” Rey agrees levelly, squinting around for her still-missing garments. “Um, my clothes-”

“BB-H8 took them. I suspect that’s the last you’ll see of them.”

With her mind again her own, outrage floods through Rey’s veins like poison — but even as the razor-tongued demand gathers on her tongue something comes rolling into the room and spins to a stop beside the huge metal greyhound. It’s another robot, this one standing only as high as her knee. Rey jumps back with a shriek of alarm as the thing rears back, waggling a pair of stubby, prehensile limbs up at her as it unleashes a torrent of electronic beeps. The damn thing sounds like it’s chastising her.

K-2SO swivels its immense, featureless head to look down at the bulbous interloper. “I’m sure Master Kylo had his reasons for not telling her.” He pauses as the smaller robot interrupts with another rush of burbling gibberish. “Yes, but she was unconscious, so she wouldn’t have heard him.  _ You  _ don’t hear anything when you’re powered off, do you?”

The bulbous robot blatts in response, rolling around a little as though unable to contain its tiny, impotent fury. There’s another sound beneath it, too, something Rey could almost mistake for rain — and she shouts in alarm as the horde of tiny robots come swarming in from the hallway. They look like smaller versions of the interloper, and though they’re moving fast enough to seem like a legion Rey squints at them until she’s sure there’s eight of them.

“Why don’t you just go tidy something?” K-2SO snaps, clearly at the end of its rope as it turns on its teardrop-shaped feet and stalks toward the open door to the corridor.

“Roger, roger!” one of the tiny version of BB-H8 cheeps, and the others follow suit, zipping throughout the barren room in search of nonexistent detritus.

BB-H8 lurches toward Rey with another menacing warble, and K-2S0’s nasal voice echoes back through the corridor. “Better come this way if you don’t want them to try to scrub you to death.”

The robot’s voice is too flat to tell whether or not it’s joking with her, but Rey retreats, slipping a little on the edge of her bedsheet swathe as she quickly trots after K-2SO. The huge cybernetic creature is nearly at the end of the hall, but it seems to slow a little as she nears, letting her catch up. “Where are you taking me?”

“I’m not taking you anywhere,  _ you’re _ following me,” K-2SO snarks, and Rey bites her lip to keep a straight face. AI though it may be, something tells her that the robot wouldn’t appreciate her laughing at it, well-intentioned or otherwise. “Though I suppose Master Kylo would probably want me to show you to your room.”

“I have a  _ room? _ ”

“Of course. But I’ll have to do something truly unpleasant to open the door.” The mecha greyhound stops and turns its head toward her in a way that makes Rey think it’s scrutinizing her. “Are you  _ really _ sure you want to go there?”

Trepidation slithers through her gut. “Perhaps there’s somewhere I can find some clothes first?”

“Is what you’re wearing unsuitable? I wasn’t programmed to understand human fashion — for which I am eternally grateful, by the way.”

“It’s a bit, um…” Rey searches for the right word as she glances down at herself, eventually settling on: “loose.”

The robot lets out a sigh that’s as massive and gloomy as itself. “I suppose there’s no avoiding it, then. But don’t try to say I didn’t warn you.”

K-2SO starts walking again, and Rey follows suit. The labyrinthine halls seem just as confusing as they did last night, betraying no sign of where they are within the penthouse apartment, but after a few anonymous twists and turns, the robot stops outside a closed door that must be its destination.

“We’re here,” the metal beast admits heavily.

“My goodness!” another voice chirrups, seeming to float out of the very aether. “K-2SO, I’m  _ most _ disappointed you didn’t let me know Mistress Rey was awake sooner!”

“I’m s-sorry, who are you?” Rey glances around, but she and K-2SO are alone in the hallway. The only sign of anything technological is the slick black control panel beside the door — and she squints at a small golden light on it that’s blinked to life like a watchful eye. “And … um … where?”

“I am C-3PO, house interface system,” the voice proudly proclaims. “And as for  _ where _ , I am integrated with the mainframe, and therefore possess the capacity to interact with you throughout Master Kylo’s entire home!”

“Wonderful,” K-2SO mutters in a tone so acidic that Rey’s surprised the robotic dog doesn’t melt its own circuits.

“It  _ is _ wonderful!” C-3PO sings cheerily — and Rey has to stifle another giggle as a low growl of disgust shudders through the metal greyhound.

“If you’re so proud of your ability to inhabit every room, perhaps you might allow us to experience the same, you overblown gasbag.”

“Wh-What? Oh! Of course!” the disembodied voice cries, and the golden light on the control panel winks again. Then the door before Rey and K-2SO cracks like an egg.

The room beyond the corridor seems positively homey compared to the rest of Kylo’s apartment. Soft roseate lights glow hospitably from recesses in the ceiling, illuminating a trapezoidal room with oddly curved corners. A large bed crowns the space from atop a small platform of polished wood, and a computer terminal slumbers on the far side of the room. An open doorway near the computer leads away into the darkness, and she tiptoes into the space, on some level afraid of disturbing its peaceable hush as she glances around. “I’m meant to stay  _ here? _ ”

“Master Kylo prepared this room for you especially, Mistress Rey!”

Rey’s heart feels like it’s hovering in her chest for a too-long moment before crashing against her ribs. How is that even possible? “But I only got here last night.”

“And unlike humans,  _ we _ have no need to sleep,” K-2SO interjects as he moves to stand at the foot of the bed. “So while you were unconscious, we attended to Master Kylo’s wishes.”

“Where is Master Kylo now?”

“Working. He’ll return in time.”

Rey’s fingers tighten on her sheet in instinctive fear as a blinding line of light slices along the ceiling. The brilliance widens like magma, sliding down along the angled side of the room to reveal another stunning view of the Sound.

“Just another projection,” the mecha greyhound sniffs, as though it can smell the disquiet seeping out of Rey’s pores. It tosses its head toward the recessed passage in the far corner. “Shower’s that way.”

_ Shower… _ The very word makes Rey suddenly aware of the stickiness of her own skin, and how long it’s been since she was clean. Her brow furrows as she glances between the huge robot and the darkened doorway. “So I should just … go?”

“Presumably you don’t need our help to wash up. In any event, C-3PO doesn’t have hands, and I’m not programmed for that functionality, either.” K-2SO turns a quick circle and settles, its body sinking gracefully to the floor like a proper dog.

“We will be right here if you need anything, Mistress Rey,” C-3PO reassures her in that chrome-bright voice that continues to surprise her with its every word. Not that she knows Kylo particularly well, even now, but it seems out of character for him to design something so …  _ cheerful _ .

Lights illuminate in the recessed passage as though sensing Rey’s approach, and she finds her way to a grey-tiled bathroom. A stack of folded, cream-colored towels rests beside the shower — not a simple tub, but a cube of frosted glass with multiple heads.

After so much upheaval she’s too stubborn to call the robots to ask for help, but works out how to operate the damn thing herself. After a few minutes of fumbling with the strange knobs and buttons she manages to coax a warm cascade of pleasantly scented water from the taps, and steps into the torrent with a sigh of longing.

The hypnotic heat lulls her into a doze, and her mind floats free, strange thoughts flitting through her very being like ghosts as she relaxes. There’s a decent chance she’s being recorded now, of course — simply because she can’t see the winking of ruby eyes doesn’t mean they’re not greedily staring. But if she isn’t as alone here as she seems, undoubtedly everything that happened last night was recorded, too. A simple shower can’t be offering up anything more of herself.

The soap, shampoo, and conditioner share the mouthwatering aroma of peaches, and she scrubs herself until her skin starts to prune. She reluctantly turns off the shower and fumbles for a towel, drying herself before she even steps out onto the cloud-soft mat.

The oval mirror over the sink has only just started to veil with fog as Rey regards herself in its reflection. The scant swipes of eyeliner and mascara that she applied last night have long since vanished, of course, but someone — or some _ thing _ — has considerately provided an array of makeup in one of the drawers below the sink. She picks through the slender pencils and wands until she finds a few she likes, and applies just a couple of flourishes. Just enough that she feels like herself again, albeit still distractingly naked.

There’s a strange indignity in starting this first of what will evidently be many days in Kylo’s domain without garments. For someone so obsessive, overlooking a detail as essential as clothing seems uncharacteristic — and Rey can’t deny the possibility that this has all been intentional, that he  _ likes  _ the idea of her suffering these small injustices. Or maybe she just likes the idea of him thinking about her naked, and the rush of heat to her sex that the thought brings.

The towel is comfortably huge, and she secures it tightly over her breasts, keeping the loose end clamped against her body with one elbow as she makes her way back out to the bedroom proper. She still can’t wrap her head out of referring to the space as her own; it’s just a bedroom. _ Kylo’s  _ bedroom, really, just as everything else in this apartment belongs to him.

She doesn’t realize she’s stopped in her tracks until C-3PO’s mother-hen voice asks, “Mistress Rey, are you quite all right?”

Rey nods, but that isn’t enough to shake off the sudden impression that looms over her like a thunderhead. The thought that  _ she _ now belongs to Kylo as much as the shower and the bed and the eerily faceless robots that haunt his penthouse halls. “K-2SO, you said I could find some clothes?”

“Back this way!” C-3PO trills quickly, cutting off any response the dour robot could make. Light pulses behind her like a beacon, and she turns back to the recessed passage. She was so hell-bent on the shower the first time she walked this way that she completely missed the second doorway, the one that leads to a closet the size of her entire bedroom back in the apartment she shares with Finn.

The sides of the close space are lined with racks of clothing, and K-2SO noses a few of the garments toward her. “Pick whatever you like, it’s yours now.”

Rey knows she’s gaping, but she can’t stop herself. This can’t all be  _ hers _ . There must be clothes for ten women in here — and she walks her fingertips along the hangers, squinting at the Gothic Lolita-style dresses and skirts that await her approval.

“Blame Mother Gothel if it doesn’t fit,” K-2SO adds.

“Well, I  _ never _ !” C-3PO sputters indignantly. “My measurements are precise to a measure of millimeters!”

“So you  _ have _ been watching me,” Rey murmurs, eyes narrowing as she stares at the golden light on the control panel beside the door.

“I do apologize,” C-3PO answers after a moment, and there’s no mistaking the regret in the AI’s high-pitched voice as it hems and haws. “Y-You see, I am, of course, subject to the nature of my programming. I am allowed a certain measure of autonomy, of course-”

“I understand,” Rey says. It’s right, of course; at the end of the day, it’s just another program, subject to whatever parameters Kylo’s imposed. C-3PO doesn’t mean to spy on her, it’s just part of its processes.

The frills and translucent lace are too much to contemplate, but eventually she finds an outfit that isn’t completely unsuitable: a white blouse with black buttons and a slender matching bow tie, paired with a high-waisted skirt with four black buttons of its own and suspender-like straps. The undergarments she finds in a nearby drawer are far more elaborate than anything she’s ever laid eyes on, and she meekly selects a bra and panty set of matching white lace — something that shouldn’t show through the top. With Kylo gone her modesty’s come rushing back like a full moon tide, overwhelming and inescapable, threatening to drown this new sense of herself.

She dubiously regards her reflection in a full-length mirror at the end of the room; the woman who stares back is respectful enough, if barefooted, like some kind of elven librarian. She hasn’t noticed until now, but the floor is warm beneath her soles, like the pleasant lull of sun-baked rock.

Her fingers worry at the skirt’s hemline. It’s incredibly short, skimming the curve of her ass so that it’ll be almost impossible to preserve her modesty if she needs to bend forward even slightly. But then, that’s probably the idea — and her reflection reddens with commingled horror and delight as she imagines Kylo staring at her from behind.

The thought of his abyss-dark eyes and the fiery touch of his lips against hers is enough to send that electric jolt of wanting through her belly. Rey’s ragged nails bite into the palms of her hands as she fights to ignore the instantaneous slickening between her thighs again.

She can almost feel Kylo here, around her. Wherever he is right now may be physically distant, but the memory of his intense black gaze gaze is powerful enough that her skin prickles.

Once she’s banished thoughts of Kylo’s stirring touch to the back of her mind, she collects herself and returns to join the robots in the main chamber of the bedroom. She eyes the bed suspiciously as she passes it; if last night was any kind of gauge, the poor thing is doomed.

The smug smile that threatens her lips is the hardest of all to fight back.

“Your breakfast should be ready by the time we reach the kitchen,” K-2SO says. It lowers its head, seeming to pointedly indicate her legs with its blind snout. “Though judging by your pace length, it might be a bit cold.”

“Oh,  _ do _ be polite, Kaytoo!” C-3PO reproaches from the aether.

Rey glowers at the mecha greyhound. “Are you calling me short?”

“I’m observing, not analyzing.” Unfazed by her anger, K-2SO turns and moves toward the door again. “And standing here bickering isn’t going to make you grow any taller, so we'd better get moving.”

Rey fumes silently for a moment, then hurries after the greyhound. There’s certainly nothing to be gained by proving it right, so she deliberately walks a bit faster than usual, if only to prove a point.

The kitchen is as sleek and modern as the other rooms, and Rey finds a plate waiting at one of several high stools set along a polished wood island. The long, slender counter is the one thing in this room not made of black marble or chrome, a massive plank of dark wood that’s naturally riven at a diagonal angle, the two ragged edges forever locked in an arm’s-length embrace of crimson and marigold resin. She stares down at the immense thing as she sits, and only after a moment acknowledges what’s waiting.

“Egg whites, turkey bacon, and whole-wheat toast,” C-3PO burbles happily from some nearby speaker. “A balanced meal tailored to your caloric needs precisely!”

Rey doesn’t want to know the specifics of how the AI knows her caloric needs along with her dimensions — but she tucks in unabashedly, relieved that K-2SO seems uninterested in her for a few minutes as she stuffs her face. She didn’t realize it until the food was there before her, but she’s ravenous, and she has to forcibly pace herself to keep from inhaling it all at once. Whatever she expected leaving the apartment last night, it wasn’t to be wrecked by Kylo Ren, let alone subject herself to his touch  _ twice _ .

And most of all, she hadn’t expected to stay, let alone indefinitely. On some level she expects to go home within the week, but what if Kylo really  _ does  _ want her to be here longer than that?

A dishwasher pops open when she’s done, and by the time Rey places what she’s used inside its hold, K-2SO seems to have noticed her again. “Master Kylo left you some things in his library, and I suppose he’ll be upset with  _ me _ if I don’t see you get them.” The immense robot sniffs heavily. “I do have my own duties, you know.”

“It’s very kind of you to take the time to show me around,” Rey says deferentially.

“Master Kylo said I had to,” the mecha greyhound informs her easily, and she follows it without further discussion.

Rey’s expecting the robot to lead her back to the study just as Phasma did last night, but she's fast disappointed. Not only is the ice-blonde woman nowhere to be found, but K-2SO takes her down another winding staircase, one that she’s sure leads to Kylo’s dungeon until she realizes the doors are different here. She’d assumed the dungeon occupied the entirety of this lower floor, but clearly something else is hidden away down here, too.

Finally the mecha greyhound stops before a wall that stretches strangely higher than the others, the open rectangle of space just before it more lobby than corridor. There’s a strange spell here, something Rey can almost identify before it eludes her again, the aroma flitting away like smoke. The door here is different from any of the others she’s seen in Kylo’s apartment; it’s wider and framed in raised obsidian, like an elevator in a skyscraper’s lobby.

A chill wriggles its way through Rey’s belly, and suddenly she’s afraid of what lies behind the mysterious door. Kylo’s dungeon wasn’t this grandiose nor so well-hidden; whatever’s behind the facing wall must be fearsome indeed.

K-2SO pauses beside the black stone frame and tosses its head as though sniffing the carved black stone. A moment later a low hum resonates through the lobby and the door clicks open, a seam shivering down the center of the otherwise featureless rectangle. The doors swing away from her, into the dark recess within, and K-2SO obediently pads between them, turning its blocky head back toward her as its low tenor echoes back through the lobby. “If you’re waiting for an invitation, that was it.”

The robot’s voice is the same nonchalant monotone as always, and it soothes Rey’s unease enough that her feet begin to move of their own accord, padding after the mechanical beast. The crimson glow that rises to light the darkness seems dreamy at first, but within a few moments it hardens, the ethereal glow playing over the hard curves of obsidian that emerge from the nothingness.

After so many sharp corners and angular planes in the rest of Kylo’s apartment, it takes her a few moments to make sense of the chamber’s fluid architecture. A spray of tremendous red crystals knifes up from the center of the oblong room, casting warm light far upward — too far upward for a single storey, she realizes as she cranes her neck back. At least three levels of catwalks cross the space overhead, the space both cozy and grandiose all at once. There’s a strange regularity about the way vertical partitions jut inward from the chamber’s walls like creeping spokes, and only as her eyes finally adjust to the dim does she realize where she’s standing.

“Master Kylo’s private library,” K-2SO confirms as though in answer to her unvoiced thought.

The robot pads toward a freestanding console at the far end of the chamber, indicating the thing with its head as Rey nears. The narrow back wall is more of that glossy black of the wallscreens upstairs, and Rey eyes it carefully as it looms over her, as though the screen is watching her back. She doesn’t know where to look for security cameras; this isn’t a place the voyeuristic videos have ever shown her.

A pair of strange objects lie waiting atop the console’s flat surface. The tablet seems self-explanatory, even if its trifold design isn’t something Rey’s encountered before. But she doesn’t dare touch the gemstone bracelet beside it, the cuff’s open metalwork glinting at her in the low light like serpent’s fangs. “What’s that?”

A pinhole of blinding light opens on the console’s front face, and Rey stumbles backward as a tall shape coalesces amid the brilliance. The image is faded, the colors washed out to a pale electronic blue, but he’s dimensional, his dark eyes somehow finding her as she stares up at him in shock.

“Rey…” Kylo’s low voice is laced with static, and she instinctively presses her thighs together to ease the ache. How can his gaze burn into her like this when he isn’t even here? “I’d hoped to be there with you this morning to orient you, but circumstances didn’t permit it.”

The renewed confirmation of his absence makes cold disappointment pour through Rey’s gut like seawater. Where is he? And how long has he been gone?

“I’ve fixed the flaw in my security grid that let your friend break in. My detail is with me today, so the apartment’s in lockdown mode. You’re completely safe. The robots should’ve helped you find food and clothing before bringing you here, and they’ll protect you in the event of an emergency.” He pauses a moment. “I’ll be back tonight. In the meantime, I have a few rules for you to follow.”

Rebellion bristles within her, quelling her knee-jerk wanting for him.  _ Rules? _ Isn’t it enough that she’s consented to stay here with him, defying all logic and reason to make herself his captive?

Kylo’s projection nods toward the console, as though this recorded version of him can see what it holds. “The bracelet will give you access to certain doors, and not to others. Don’t try to override its settings.”

She eyes the jeweled cuff again, strangely less suspicious of it now that she knows it’s not some mere trinket. Of course; with a man like Kylo, jewelry never  _ would _ be just that.

“You’re to eat the meals that’ve been prepared for you. Let C-3PO know if anything isn’t to your liking, he’s programmed to be adaptive. A physician will be stopping by late this morning to give you a checkup, and Kaytoo will let you know when they’ve arrived.” He pauses again, as if deciding whether or not to say something more. “Stretch. Physically, I mean. Kaytoo will show you where to find what you need. And take today to explore my library, I think you’ll like it.” A faint smile touches Kylo's full lips, but then it’s gone again and Rey wonders if it was only her imagination. “You didn’t have to stand up to your friend for me the way you did, so I’d like to offer you something in return — your justification for being here. Think up a project. Anything you want to work on, whether in a lab or pure research, and I’ll provide you the resources to complete it.”

Rey’s mouth is suddenly dry, her heart hammering at the dessicated branches of her ribs. Is he serious? It’s the kind of opportunity a thousand tech interns would battle royale each other for, and yet he’s offering it to her.

“And speaking of research…” His countenance darkens in the recorded projection, his dark brow knitting above obsidian eyes. “I’ll be sending you a list. Review it, familiarize yourself with the terms, and follow the instructions. I expect a response from you no later than four o’clock.”

The sudden sharpness in his tone makes her jump. Suddenly this pale rendition of Kylo seems like a stern teacher talking about homework — and a frisson of inexplicable excitement shivers through her.

_ You need a teacher, Rey. _

She hadn’t realized he meant that literally.

He steps forward, and for another moment she can almost forget he’s nothing more than a projection as he stares down at her. “I’ll see you soon. Make sure you’re ready for me.”

Then he’s gone.

Rey gnaws her bottom lip as she straightens her skirt, hoping the mecha greyhound a few feet away from her can’t sense the state of utter destruction her panties are in from seeing Kylo again. The memory of his hands on her naked body is enough to set her skin on fire — and she smoothes her skirt self-consciously, as if that’s somehow going to help.

She wishes she had someone familiar to talk to. If only Finn wasn’t being such a git about all this. There’s more to Kylo than he thinks — she’s seen as much already, and Finn’s clumsy attempt to protect her seemed more self-interested than altruistic. On some level she’d assumed Kylo wasn’t serious about her working for him, that it was all part of trying to convince her to sign his contract, but obviously she’s miscalculated. Surely, if Finn could see what Kylo’s really like, he could understand he’s miscalculated, too.

Finn’s the only boy she’s spent any length of time around — and even though he’s a few years older than she is, that’s how she’s always thought of him: as a boy. Kylo is something else altogether. He’s a predator. A worthy adversary.

K-2SO moves close to the freestanding console, dark and silent again now that her captor’s message slumbers again, and nudges the cuff. “You’d better take this. I don’t want you to be pestering me every time you need to exercise your humanity.”

The memory of the morning is still powerful enough to make Rey pinch her knees together, and she snatches the cuff without further urging.

“Bit gaudy, isn’t it?” she mutters mutinously as she slides the thing over her narrow wrist.

“Master Kylo’s luxury businesses fund his research divisions,” K-2SO offers pertly. “But if you ask me…” The robot tilts its head, as though regarding the thing pointedly. “Never mind. Don’t ask me, you won’t like the answer.”

The red stones flash at her like fire in the relative gloom as if reminding her that she’s tethered to this place, each synthesized ruby a tiny, glittering anchor. That instant surge of resentment floods her at feeling so trapped — but as she stares at the library’s swooping Gothic ribs, she can’t help but marvel at the scope of it.

There are worse places to find herself a prisoner, and worse men to find herself a prisoner of.

“So what now?” K-2SO asks. “Some of us have things to do, you know.”

Rey shrugs, her cheeks tightening with the sudden grin. “You heard the man … I’m going to explore his library.”

* * *

The doctor arrives as Rey’s in the middle of scrutinizing the library’s guardian robot, a jumpy little crawler bot with the designation of R2-D2. The bot burst out of the densely packed stacks of the second floor as soon as she ascended; it seems cheerful like the apartment’s house interface system, but scurries off at the sound of a sudden chime, which K-2SO informs her means she day’s sole visitor is announcing themselves at the front door.

She glances at her red gemstone cuff as she follows K-2SO back out of the library and through the apartment’s anonymous, cyber-Gothic passageways. No doubt the front door is one of the few where the bracelet won’t flash white, triggering the thing to open with a soft click — but instead of making her feel more trapped, the realization elicits a smug satisfaction. Her life has been spent drifting, floating here and then for a few years before moving twenty or forty miles away. Thanks to what of herself she’s surrendered to Kylo, she now has no say in the matter — and her slick panties rub against her sex, reproaching her with each step.

The doctor is a no-nonsense woman with greying hair who moves with the sharp efficiency of a hummingbird, measuring Rey’s vitals and drawing a sample of her blood so slyly that she might be part vampire. She even conveniently knows to bring Rey’s exact brand of birth control, so she won’t miss a single dose — but the swipe of the swab inside her humiliatingly drenched pussy is almost too much to bear. 

All in all the checkup is over mercifully quickly, save for what happens at the end, as the doctor’s gathering her tools to leave. That strange reference in Kylo’s message has been nagging her, and of anyone, maybe his personal physician can explain it. “Why should I work on my flexibility? S-Someone mentioned I should.”

The woman’s eyes go wide, and for the first time since Rey met her in Kylo’s study, her cool facade cracks. “It can be … er … strenuous to hold certain poses for extended lengths of time. Those sorts of activities require both strength and flexibility.”

“Oh.  _ Oh. _ ” Rey blushes as she thinks about the strange aches that still ripple through her body, evidence of last night’s exertions in Kylo’s bed.

“Not sex — or not only that,” the doctor corrects. “I don’t want to speak out of turn, but … your range of motion is important to Mr. Ren. Knowing it, anyway, so he can work within those parameters.” The woman glances around, as though Kylo might suddenly leap out of a wall panel. Or maybe she knows about the security cameras. “Watch a few yoga vids on the web, try to follow along. You might find it worthwhile later on.”

She’s still baffled, but the woman’s so discomfited that she lets her go. It’s not an impossible thing for Kylo to ask of her — or  _ order  _ her, as he’s really done, there was no request involved — but the bizarreness of it still bothers her.

K-2SO leaves her in the study, sniffing something about more important business. “Don’t worry, Mistress, Rey, I’m only too happy to assist you back to the library, just leave it to me!” C-3PO reassures her as the mecha greyhound lumbers off.  To Rey’s relief the bookcase door pop open when her wrist cuff flashes, and a slender river of red light flows along the floor, leading her back to the tomblike library and an effervescent, burbling welcome from R2-D2.

There’s so much to do in the library that Rey almost gets dizzy from it all. To be surrounded by so many robots is fairytale for her, but she misses her program, her little bb, as she thinks of him, and tries to distract herself from wondering when Hux will bring her computer. She flits from one thing to another, immersing herself an in an actual hardback copy of  The Diamond Age only to abandon it in favor of skimming tech news headlines on the wallscreen. KoR Technology seems surprisingly quiet compared to the doings of Silicon Valley, but she finds a blurb about something called Veradun Corp.

What does Kylo want with medical technology? The idea of an intelligent surgical knife is certainly fascinating, and Rey can immediately think of a hundred uses for instant-diagnosis technology. But the mention of the OSF in the same two-hundred-word stub is unsettling.

“It’s always so distressing to see the family at odds with each other,” C-3PO muses sadly as Rey searches for more information about Veradun Corp.

“The Skywalkers?” Rey frowns at the amber light on the freestanding console. Finn’s never mentioned anything about infighting; they’re too old for one thing, too stodgy for another. “I hardly think the OSF’s the sort for personal drama.”

“Not just the OSF.” The house interface is sudden more somber than she’s ever heard it — or him, as Kylo said. “Between all of them. The OSF and Master Kylo. If I may…” The wallscreen flickers as Threepio takes control, and a series of images flash before her. Obviously the slender, sallow boy is a younger version of Kylo, and he stands between other younger versions of people Rey well knows.

Luke Skywalker. Leia Organa-Solo, herself a Skywalker by birth. Han Solo. Finn’s idols all.

“Back when Master was known as Ben Solo,” the house computer offers quietly.

Kylo said something last night about using her to shield himself from the OSF. Is it a coincidence, the timing of that article about Veradun? It seems unlikely, but Rey still can’t fathom why they’re poised to come to blows over a relatively insignificant biomed startup.

She squints at the picture that’s ended up on top, her pulse now a wild canter. Kylo can’t be any older than thirteen in this one, and he’s in that some pose as ever, back almost uncomfortably straight, hands folded behind him. It hadn’t struck her at first, but the pattern is clear from seeing all the images together.

No one’s touching him.

Perhaps it’s just coincidence, or perhaps this is why it’s so hard for Rey to wrap her mind around the fact that he really  _ is _ their son. Tiny, gnarled Leia Organa-Solo and her lantern-jawed husband… They’re in so many of these pictures together, yet not one includes a warm hand on his shoulder, or any closeness that might indicate affection.

Ben. Kylo. Who is he  _ really? _ Rey isn’t at all sure; all she knows for certain is that he wants her.

A beep echoes through the library, prompting a squeal of alarm from R2-D2 as it nearly falls from its perch along one of the library’s rib walls, climbing to reshelve a book. “Message received for you, Mistress Rey,” C-3PO says quickly, his voice prim with importance. “Shall I display it on the wallscreen?”

“No!” Rey shouts, only realizing how loud she’s been as the house interface splutters an apology. There’s no way this can be from anyone but Kylo. “N-No, it’s all right, Threepio — I’m sorry. Can you just send it to the tablet?”

“But of course!”

Rey narrows her eyes at the sudden rush of light from the device, the size of a large smartphone now that its extendable sides are compacted. She’d expected a more elaborate message, but instead she finds herself confronting a simple phrase, and a few neat columns below it.

_ Rey’s Homework #1: Indicate your preferences. _

The columns for her responses are five in number, the headers frozen at the top of the screen as she scrolls down.  _ Hard limit. Soft limit. Neutral. Interest. High interest. _ The latter three are self-explanatory, but the first two have been thoughtfully hyperlinked, and she reads the associated descriptions with steadily widening eyes.

Only then does she dare confront the words in the leftmost column, Kylo’s criteria.

_ Collaring. Restraint. Blindfolding. OTK spanking. Anal training. Suspension. Pet play. _

The words keep scrolling.

_ Whip. Clamps. Violet wand. Flogger. _

More and more entries, the words terrifyingly uncertain. And all of them clickable, the blank boxes beside them staring back at her balefully.

_ Bareback. Shibari. Consensual nonconsent. _

“Mistress Rey, your pulse is absolutely racing!” C-3PO dithers from an eternity away, his voice echoing as though from the far end of a tunnel. “Are you quite all right?”

Rushing fills Rey’s ears like cotton and she gulps for air, overwhelmed by the realization of what exactly Kylo’s asking from her. In the time she’s been spending getting comfortable here, amid his thousands of books, his mind has been elsewhere, planning things she can’t yet imagine. Any thought that he’ll be done with her within a week is dashed to smithereens with the thoroughness of this list.

How sad-eyed Ben Solo became the inscrutable man who now owns her future is a mystery Rey’ll have to save for another day.

“I’m fine, Threepio,” she tells the house computer, forcing her nerves to steady themselves as she settles herself in a chair set back in one of the shallow stacks. She doesn’t have time to panic, not now. A timer that’s been linked to the survey is already ticking down to Kylo’s deadline, and Rey doesn’t want to imagine what might happen to her if she’s late. “It’s just high time for me to get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS FOR READING!!
> 
> <3
> 
> Don't forget to sound off with any thoughts and opinions, you lovelies really are the best!


	5. Master and Apprentice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey hunches before him as he directs, hair trailing forward to tickle the insides of her outstretched arms as she looks down. For a moment she’d taken the revelation in stride, but the disquiet in her gut isn’t receding the way she’d thought it was — it’s growing, intensifying like a hurricane.
> 
> How can Kylo not believe in love?
> 
> His shadow pools before her. She moves to look up but he’s faster, catching the back of her head and physically stopping her. “Look at your hands. That’s my girl.”
> 
> _My girl._ The words together are a spark, igniting whatever it is that’s been festering in her gut since Kylo’s phrase _emotional entanglements_ hit her ears so jarringly. It’s nearly tearing her apart to want him so badly, to have ached for him and longed for him today — but now, thinking about what he just said, bile lays acid kisses up the inside of her throat.
> 
> He wants a slave — not someone to share with, but someone to control. And she’s already given herself to him, because some dark part of her _wants_ him to dehumanize her.
> 
> Being at Kylo’s mercy had seemed so much easier when she wasn’t on her knees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Hotness again. Dehumanizing, beautiful hotness <3
> 
> Turns out Kylo's library isn't the only thing that has a few secrets - and Rey's forced to confront an agonizing choice when one of his hard limits is revealed.
> 
> If she could have _almost_ everything about Kylo, would that be enough?
> 
> Read on to find out... ;)

“Oh, heavens, Master Kylo! Thank goodness!” Threepio shrieks over the pneumatic whisper of the apartment’s front door shutting, and Rey realizes two things simultaneously.

First, Kylo’s finally home. Second — and perhaps more importantly — she’s in a whole world of trouble.

It isn’t the homework he set for her, thank goodness.  _ That _ she submitted a comfortable fifteen minutes ahead of his four o’clock deadline; it had proved a most illuminating if cheek-reddening exercise. Some of his queries she’d ruled out after a cursory image search, but others seemed almost …  _ intriguing _ . A strange, childlike giddiness had overtaken her as soon as she’d hit send on the return message, and she’d succumbed to it with shameful results.

Rey presses herself against the wall, heart thudding reproachfully as she listens to Kylo’s slow footsteps. The urge to glance around the corner into the apartment’s wide foyer and see his reaction is almost irresistible, because what she’s done is far, far worse than anything on his list.

She’s messed with his robots.

“Slow down, Threepio,” Kylo’s low, curt voice interjects as the house interface AI sputters in nigh-incoherent indignation. Ironically, being the only disembodied intelligence of the bunch has rendered C-3PO immune to Rey's ministrations, but it’s offended by her actions on principle. A whirring whine echoes through the corridor as BB-H8 joins Kylo from the opposite direction, adding its rageful burbling to the cacophony.

She presses a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle at the memory of her own handiwork. It wasn’t easy to defile the rotund robot, but after the way it absconded with her clothes this morning some minor retribution was in order.

And that had only been the beginning.

“I see,” Kylo says evenly, cutting through the robots’ overlapping chatter — but as he raises his voice, the razor edge of iciness stings her ears: “ _ Rey! _ ”

She waits a few moments before shamefacedly rounding the corner and revealing herself. Kylo’s standing with his hands clasped behind his back, and the simple epaulettes of his black wool jacket make his shoulders seem broader than ever as he observes her.

His Stygian gaze flicks to the robots and back.

She stares at the metal monsters, determinedly clenching her jaw against the laughter threatening to break loose. It had been a simple matter of a pink highlighter, copy paper, tape, and one of Kylo’s laser gadgets that could burn through the paper to make sets of bunny ears for each of the larger robots. The matching mustaches had proved a last-minute stroke of genius; as the 'bots swivel to face her now, she can almost imagine they’re glaring at her for the indignity of it.

K-2SO skulks into sight in another corridor mouth bunny ears bouncing sadly with each step. He offers up a chuffing sigh, then retreats as the swarm of tiny robots spill into the foyer, running around his stubby paws like a river of living metal. He’d endured her sneak attack with the dignity of a backstabbed Caesar; Rey had no doubt she’d have to bend over backward to make amends, but he was just _ so damn cute _ ...

Kylo’s voice is perilously soft. “Are you proud of yourself?”

“No.” Rey drops her head, shaking it ruefully. “I’m … disappointed.”

“Ah.”

Her breath catches, and suddenly the giggles escape like a breath held overlong, the words borne along with them: “...disappointed I didn’t finish all the tiny ones, too, before you got home!”

Rey’s terrified for laughing, but she just can’t help it. To her unspeakable relief, Kylo’s full lips quirk in a twisted grin instead of upbraiding her. “Fond of little animals, are you?”

“I’m sor-sor-sorry!” she howls, bending almost double as her head swims with mirth.

Kylo narrows his dark eyes searchingly. His smile lingers as his gaze smolders at her like living coals. “No you’re not. Anyway, I had something similar in mind.”

Only now as he moves his right hand forward does Rey see the flat, square velvet box, and her laughter evaporates.

“Go on,” he urges her softly, holding the thing out.

She’s never seen a necklace box in person, of course — or if she ever ran across one in the junkyard growing up, the memory didn’t stick. But she recognizes it from the movies, and her fingertips tingle with warning as she stares at it, not daring to reach out.

“Fine.”

Kylo pops the box open, and Rey squints at the thing that waits within. At first it looks like one solid loop of metal, but as she squints at it she can pick out the individual metal rings that’ve been woven together to form the silver chain. A red stone sparkles at her from a complex diamond of links that’s no doubt meant to fall at the hollow of her throat, and a circular loop of metal dangles beneath the gem like a hollow teardrop.

“See, Rey, I'm fond of little creatures, too. Tame ones.” Kylo’s beyond pleased with himself, if quietly so. “Do you know what this is?”

She shakes her head, suspecting from what she read on his list, yet not daring to believe it. It was only an hour ago that she’d indicated her interest level in the multiple-choice field — had he correctly anticipated what she’d say, or just reacted quickly?

“It’s your training collar.”

The slender man’s obsidian eyes seethe at Rey, smug with triumph, and the chainmaille collar glints at her as though daring her to touch it. Her pulse thrums through her entire body as she stares down at it, like she’s on the verge of vibrating out of her own skin.

This is for  _ her _ . She’s never had jewelry before, apart from a slim leather thong she’d worn for a few years — but she’d forgotten that back at Unkar’s shop the day she ran away with Finn. By the time she’d realized it wasn’t in her bag, it was far too late to turn back.

The necklace’s design reminds her of the jeweled bangle that’s now weighing her wrist down like an anchor, and she gently shakes the cuff of her shirt aside to steal a glance at it. There’s a mixture of harshness and elegance in the metalwork, like an ornate window looking onto magma. Hephaestus himself would be proud.

Yet even a gilded chain is still a chain. This collar is a snare — but from the way her skin flushes at his closeness, Rey knows she’s already caught.

“Not here, though.” Kylo withdraws the box and snaps it shut, glancing significantly at the ear-and-mustache-bedecked robots. BB-H8 grumbles quietly, and the swarm of its smaller counterparts scuttle back around a corner in a hallway and out of sight. “You can straighten up your mess later. Right now I need you for something.”

His skin threatens to burn Rey’s as his fingers enfold hers, and she’s keeping pace beside him before she even realizes she’s started walking. After so many hours spent on her own today his presence is overwhelming, as though she’s hand-in-hand with a live wire.

Kylo’s full lips twist as he peers down at her. “Did you miss me today?”

She gapes back at him. He isn’t smiling, exactly — is he teasing her? He looms over her like a human raven, and for the first time in her life she can understand ancient stories of shapeshifting gods.

Rey’s brow knits painfully, and stubbornness joins the adrenaline that’s already livid in her veins. She resolutely snaps her gaze forward. “Of course not, I hardly know you.” She risks another glance up at him, but his expression is cryptic, like a long-dead language carved in stone. “D-Did you miss  _ me? _ ”

“It’s my house, I didn’t need to.”

The back of Rey’s neck prickles with the confirmation of her suspicion: “You were spying on me.”

“I wasn’t going to imprison you in my house and  _ not _ keep an eye on you, if that's what you're insinuating,” Kylo growls, his glare flashing with offense as they stride along. “I’m not going to neglect you, Rey.”

There it is again: that spark of impulse in her gut that says she  _ should _ be insulted by his controlling behavior. Surely it should bother her that he’s been silently keeping tabs on her during his absence — but the outrage that lances through her is hollow, the relic of someone else’s opinion. A ghost’s, perhaps.

Kylo’s fingers tighten briefly on her own, and abruptly he sounds properly conversational. “Did you have a good day, at least? You seemed to.”

“Y-Yes, thank you.”

“What lovely manners,” he murmurs.

She can feel her cheeks coloring crimson. Does he expect her to call him  _ sir _ again? He doesn’t seem to, so she decides to avoid the word for now. “Did  _ you _ ?”

His lips part a little, as though he’s taken aback that she’s asked. “Yes.” He keeps silent long enough to swipe them through a doorway that opens onto stairs leading downward. “I suspect you’d’ve mentioned if you’d thought of a project for yourself yet.”

Lost for words, Rey nods. Between her strangely altered circumstances, the robots, the doctor’s visit, and her homework assignment from Kylo, his offer slipped from her mind altogether.

Kylo twitches one of his shoulders in a lopsided shrug. He seems to have more pressing things on his mind. “I'm sure something will come to you when the moment’s right.”

Tremors run through Rey’s knees as the library’s distinctive door emerges around a bend in the hallway. The dungeon she could understand, especially given the way Kylo’s got the collar’s velvet box clenched in a death grip — but even being the bibliophile that she is, Rey can’t imagine what book could warrant him bringing her here.

Kylo hooks a sharp right just inside the library’s entrance, glancing up into the higher levels as he waves his wristwatch over a strange section of the wall that Rey hasn’t noticed before — a tiny, smooth square of black metal no larger than a postage stamp. “Artoo, make yourself scarce,” he calls, his strong voice reverberating through the library like a wave, and Rey hears an obedient burble in response. A few moments later the tips of two bunny ears wrought of paper bounce along in the second level as the library’s custodian trundles off someplace more discreet, disappearing into a wall port and thence to parts unknown.

For a moment it feels like Rey’s about to pass out as her head spins — but it’s not her, it’s the lighting itself that’s changing, casting strange shadows through the still-unfamiliar space. The upthrust of glowing crystals in the center of the chamber is rotating aside to reveal the gleaming lines of a spiral staircase leading down into not-quite-darkness.

Rey gazes at the maw in wonder. All day she spent in here, not knowing there was yet another layer of this Rubik’s cube apartment lurking beneath her bare feet. One dungeon in this apartment complex had seemed quite enough; two is simply showing off.

“The Black Pit... Niflheim... I hadn’t really settled on a name for it yet,” Kylo offers quietly.

“I'm sure something will come to you when the moment is right,” Rey quips, and her reward is another flash of that rare smile of his.

The strange words and newfound images surge into a maelstrom in her mind as Rey lets Kylo lead her toward the shadowed aperture. Then, abruptly, he stops, blocking her with his body like a threshold guardian.

He holds out his hand, palm-up. “Your bracelet.”

She sharpens her gaze, but doesn’t move to obey. “Relieving me of my freedom so soon?”

“Freedom is just an illusion, Rey. Something  _ I _ grant you.” His slender fingers ever-so-slightly flex. “And I have more effective ways of revoking it than simply asking.”

He’s right, of course. A single line of code in some database would reduce the bracelet to a mere shiny bauble. Yet she’s strangely reluctant to surrender it, and her fingers linger on the thing’s wrought metal frame.

“Tartarus,” she says suddenly.

A crease appears between Kylo’s dark brows as he sets the jeweled bracelet aside on a flat portion of the crystal upthrust. “Why?”

It’s as though giving up her physical autonomy has loosened her tongue. “Because eternal torture and punishment does seem so  _ very _ up your alley — at least if I’m to believe that multiple-choice survey of yours.”

“I’m a man with two dungeons.” Kylo’s mouth twitches in amusement as he lifts Rey’s hand and places it atop his own, escorting her down the spiral stairs like some twisted bride. Her sex pulses with warning, the demon between her thighs awakening as he laces his fingers between hers and squeezes tight. “Do you really think I’d ask those kinds of questions idly?”

“What’s the use of the other one if you’re bringing me here?” she mutters mutinously. The darkness creeps up her bare legs like they’re descending into the ocean — but soft light emanates from below, the source still out of sight.

“Guests,” Kylo answers with a curious half-smile.

“Like Finn?”

“No.  _ Proper  _ guests.” Kylo’s expression becomes that nearly permanent scowl of his. “Tartarus… The only fitting prison for a titan.” His obsidian gaze flickers over her. “Even a small one.”

Rey stops short at the foot of the stairs, so intoxicated by Kylo that she doesn’t notice the final step until it’s behind her. The shadows have completely ensconced them, but she quickly finds the puddles of light that lie ahead.

This dungeon is perfectly circular. Just beyond where she and Kylo stand, concentric, glowing red lines form a maze leading inward. Rey’s gaze is drawn to the center of the space, where the lacquered black floor and its illuminated labyrinth gives way to fabric. It’s a mat of some kind, set into the floor itself — a bed.

_ Yes _ . Finally. This day has seemed interminable without him, and her pussy clenches at the memory of him filling her completely. That’s why he’s brought her here — it must be...

She’s hardly taken all this in when Kylo squeezes her fingers again, then releases her hand altogether. He falls back a pace, his countenance becoming stern. “Stay here while I get changed. You may look, but don’t touch.”

The dark-eyed man disappears around the edge of a false wall, and Rey fiddles with the hem of her skirt as she glances about. The edges of the room are completely shrouded in shadow, but they’re not empty. Gleaming wood cases lurk in the depths like sharks, bureaus and wardrobes shut tight, keeping their secrets for now. Glass cases emerge from the gloom around her like teeth, and Rey knows the names of the implements silently suspended within.

Crops. Whips. Cuffs. Clamps. Even more that she can’t name, sworn to dark purposes she can’t yet fathom.

A flash of crimson draws her eye from the wall to the left, affixed to the wall and cast in a puddle of light. It’d be faster to simply walk across the lines of the glowing labyrinth, but Rey chooses to walk around the maze’s perimeter, skirting the shadows until it’s before her.

It takes a few moments of silent fumbling to remember the word  _ flogger _ , but that’s what this coiled implement resembles. It’s been hung in such a manner as to showcase its beauty, everything from the leather-wrapped handle to the intricately braided tails.

Yet instead of regular tips, each of the plaited straps terminates in a bloodred rose. The flogger’s creator took the trouble to make the blossom look truly realistic, even wrapping them in dark viridian leaves. It’s a cruel bouquet — and Rey finds herself reaching out to the slim leather stems, wondering whether the thorns are equal merciless or only for show.

Just in time she remembers Kylo’s prohibition and withdraws, moving back toward the foot of the spiral staircase to remove herself from temptation’s reach. This place is like a sunken prison, a true underworld, even down to the horned silver-and-obsidian mask hanging from the lip of a circular false ceiling. A crack runs down the mask’s face, as though it’s been rent in two.

“My grandfather’s.” The sound of Kylo’s voice makes Rey jump. She turns back to find him wearing a pair of loose-fitting black pants with a series of long loops along the sides, and the sight of his bare chest makes her face redden. He’s unperturbed by her reaction, only nodding to the fissured mask. “Taken from his body the night he was killed.”

“And you hung it here?”

His eyes narrow, and suddenly Rey doesn’t care about anything else, past or future, just him. She’s conscious of every breath, every convulsive beat of her heart, every bead of sweat on her skin. A menacing silver zipper snakes up the front of his black pants, and all Rey can think about is what’s waiting behind it.

“Why here?” Rey hates the way her voice sounds so small, almost childlike in this strange room. It’s jarring to remember how many floors lie below them — that this isn’t, in fact, underground, but far closer to Olympus. Or the Olympic Mountains, at any rate.

“To claim you properly. And to train you.”

“ _ Train _ me—?”

“Yes.” Kylo’s suddenly there just before her and her mouth’s gone dry. He runs his knuckles along the swell of her cheek, his skin just barely caressing herself.

Rey swallows hard, gasping a little as her lips burn with wanting. A tendril of his dark hair sweeps across his forehead, and she longs more than anything to push it back, savoring the softness of his hair.

But no — that would be a tender gesture. And tender is not how Kylo works.

“I’m going to teach you the way I myself was taught,” he continues, mercifully oblivious to her sudden impulse. “Mold you into a better version of yourself — the person trapped underneath everything the world’s turned you into. Your  _ true _ self. That’s why I had you articulate your limits.”

The list. Of course. Rey scowls to hide the sudden swell of self-consciousness that sweeps through her body. “And what are  _ your _ limits?”

“Anything that wasn’t on the survey.”

“Anything at  _ all? _ ”

Kylo’s fingers twitch at his sides, as though he’s caught somewhere between irritation and vexation at her outburst. “Why does that surprise you?”

“What about—” She laughs a little, feeling silly saying the words aloud. “—relationships?  _ Real  _ ones. Surely you must-”

Kylo’s cold expression makes the words die on her lips.

He can’t be serious. Everyone —  _ everyone _ — is looking for love in this city. It’s statistically impossible that she’s found the one who isn’t.

“I have a business to run. That means managing variables.”

“Love isn’t something you can reduce to a  _ variable _ ,” Rey splutters.

“How would you know?” Kylo peers at her, his gaze as cool as frosted jet. His expression is so distant, as though he’s regarding her as though from the far end of a telescope. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Have  _ you _ ?” Rey shoots back even before she can think.

“I can’t afford emotional entanglements.”

Something sharp and unspeakable lances through her gut. “That’s cold.”

“As cold as your assessment that chaotic, messy relationships are the only ones that can be  _ real? _ ” A tendon jumps in Kylo’s temple as he grits his jaw and nods to the mask again, urgently now. “My grandfather was ruled by his emotions. He became obsessed with his own willing slave, to his death. His ways died with him.” One hand strikes at his chest like a chopping axe. “I walk my own path.”

The soles of Rey’s bare feet tingle, and she shifts her weight as she scrutinizes him. “Why is this bothering you so much?”

“It’s not bothering me. You asked me a question, and I answered.”

His answer is too quick, the syllables clipped even for Kylo. Rey’s hit a nerve — and her chest tightens painfully. “Must be a strange path that leads you to build a second dungeon in your apartment,” she mutters to hide the sudden, inexplicable ache.

“It’s been a strange path that’s led me to you.” Kylo’s intensity eases at her words, and he tilts his head to one side, regarding her in a way that kisses her skin like commingled fire and ice. “To your masochism, and wherever that in turn leads.”

“You want me to be  _ your  _ slave.” It isn’t a question, but some part of her needs to say the words, needs to hear his confirmation.

“You already are, Rey. You belong to me, the same way the ink belongs to the paper on the contract you signed.” The dark man’s voice is like a frozen waterfall, hypnotic and inescapable. “You’re mine from now until I decide I’m done with you. And I don’t tire of things quickly.”

The tension in Rey’s stomach abates a little, soothed by Kylo’s smoldering gaze. It’s been her most savage fear that he’ll suddenly tell her there’s been some kind of mistake, that he’ll toss her back out onto the street without warning. But it isn’t the apartment, nor the clothes, nor even the robots — magnificent as they are — that she’s scared of losing.

He’s watching her like a ravenous wolf, and for a moment it’s so dark in the dungeon that Rey can almost pretend they’re alone in a timeless void, not even stars to distract from his beauty. His face is surly, troubled, but she can feel herself drinking him in, longing to feel his arms cage her body against his.

“There’s one tradition of my grandfather’s that I intend to carry on,” the dark man tells her as he slowly circles her. His gaze wanders over her body, and she forces herself to stay perfectly still, pretending not to care as he completes his circuit of her. “Master and apprentice. One teacher, and one student, passing on the ancient ways.”

Rey pointedly lets her gaze wander over the room. “What of  _ this _ could you possibly call ancient?”

“The art itself.” Kylo’s full lips twist in a tortured grin. “Crafting a perfect submissive.”

Goosebumps ripple up the nape of Rey’s neck — and she gasps as in the next moment he buries his hand in her hair, taking control of her with that simple gesture. Her nerves prickle with a chill rush, and her feet steer themselves as he directs her to the center of the labyrinth, where the black sunken bed lies waiting.

“You’re going to come to love and hate this place,” he murmurs over her shoulder, his low, musical voice rich with pleasure. “But I’ll try to be kind today.”

He stops her at the edge and curls his arm, turning her to face him. The mat is surprisingly solid beneath her bare feet, firm yet forgiving. His body is inches from hers, but her heart sinks as he only holds her away and releases her, stepping back.

The flicker of lust for her is locked away in his dark eyes, seething behind the cool mask that’s no less tangible than his grandfather’s. Kylo simply wears his mask on the inside.

“When I summon you here in the future, you will surrender your autonomy at the threshold of your own accord. You will proceed down the stairs, remove your clothing, and present yourself to me here in the Pose of Supplication.”

Rey blinks up at Kylo’s sallow face, trying to process what he’s just said as he stares down at her. Is he waiting?

_...You will proceed down the stairs, remove your clothing… _

Oh. No wonder his gaze keeps expectantly dropping to her throat.

Rey’s hands fly to her collar, and Kylo offers a pale smile as she fumbles with her tie. She shucks it along with her blouse and skirt, but he stops her with a nod as she begins to reach around her back to unhook the lacy white bra. “That’s enough for the moment. I want you to focus on learning the ritual, and you’ll remember it better if you’re not as self-conscious.” He nudges her discarded clothing aside with one foot. “On your knees.”

Rey’s heartbeat quickens as she drops to first one knee, then the other.

Kylo shakes his head. “Not one at a time, down on both at once.”

She struggles back to her feet and tries it again, awkwardly. It feels prim to move the way he’s asking — frustrating so, since her body doesn’t even seem capable of it at first — but then she’s down on her knees before him in an ungainly heap.

“Point your toes. Put your palms on the floor in front of you, and lift your hips. Lower your chin.”

Rey hunches before him as he directs, hair trailing forward to tickle the insides of her outstretched arms as she looks down. For a moment she’d taken the revelation in stride, but the disquiet in her gut isn’t receding the way she’d thought it was — it’s growing, intensifying like a hurricane.

How can Kylo not believe in love?

His shadow pools before her. She moves to look up but he’s faster, catching the back of her head and physically stopping her. “Look at your hands. That’s my girl.”

_ My girl _ . The words together are a spark, igniting whatever it is that’s been festering in her gut since Kylo’s phrase  _ emotional entanglements _ hit her ears so jarringly. It’s nearly tearing her apart to want him so badly, to have ached for him and longed for him today — but now, thinking about what he just said, bile lays acid kisses up the inside of her throat.

He wants a slave — not someone to share with, but someone to control. And she’s already given herself to him, because some dark part of her  _ wants _ him to dehumanize her.

Being at Kylo’s mercy had seemed so much easier when she wasn’t on her knees.

“How long do you want me to stay like this?” she grits out, voice quavering as her muscles protest the uncomfortable posture.

Kylo’s knees softly crack as he crouches beside her. She can feel his head spreading over her bare shoulders like an ethereal blanket — yet he doesn’t touch her. “Until I’m satisfied.”

Rey doesn’t know if he’s watching her; he’s silent, only his soft breaths audible in the dungeon’s hush. After a few minutes he straightens and pads away, his feet receding from her sightline.

Kylo’s voice stops her again as she lifts her head again to look for him. “No. Look at your hands, Rey.”

Her mouth compresses into a rebellious line as she turns her stare back to the edge of the black mattress. It had seemed reasonably soft underfoot, but kneeling atop it in this same unwavering position like Greek marble is beginning to take its toll. Her spine shivers, and once she makes the mistake of noticing the pain in her knees it morphs into a dull, steady throb.

Rey lifts one leg, straightening it backward to ease a gathering cramp — and a cry bursts from her lips as something stings the back of her calf. “I told you not to move.”

It’s almost instinctive to look up, but she fights the urge, hunching back into the odd pose. “I had a cramp!”

Kylo’s voice floats out of the darkness at the edge of her vision as though sent from the sandman himself. “A cramp is momentary, transient pain. The point of this pose isn’t for you to be comfortable, it’s to prove something to me — and to yourself.”

“Prove  _ what? _ ”

“That you’re stronger than you think you are.”

Rey shifts to and fro on her hands, trying to urge enough circulation into her hands to quell the tingling in her fingertips. “What do you want from me —  _ really? _ ”

“Your submission.”

“I’m submitting to you now, aren’t I?” she snarls into the mattress as her thighs are beset by tremors from within. “You’ve got me on my knees, how much more can you possibly want!”

Shielded by his invisibility, Kylo sighs heavily. “You’re still fighting me. And until you stop, we can’t move forward in your training.”

“Training in  _ what? _ Being your little whore?”

“In self-control!” he snaps, his voice rolling through the circular chamber like thunder.

Rey’s joints scream in protest as she cants backward into a crouch and then stands. Roaring fills her ears for a moment, and she shakes her head, clearing it. “This is stupid.”

Kylo’s standing at the edge of the glowing crimson labyrinth-lines, the rose flogger looming just beyond his shoulder. He’s utterly still, but his dark eyes shout at her amid the dim. “Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving.”

She rips her gaze from his and marches toward the spiral staircase without looking back, but Kylo’s voice follows her like a thunderbolt. “Cross that threshold and you’ll void our contract.”

“I don’t care!” Rey calls over her shoulder, refusing to slacken her pace.

“Finn certainly will.”

_ That _ stops her dead. The line of the bottom step, just moments ago welcoming, lurks beyond the tip of her foot as viscerally as Kylo’s threat.

“Set foot across that threshold before I grant you permission, and I’ll have him in police custody before you reach my front door.” His soft footfalls echo through the dungeon, but Rey still doesn’t turn. “You’ll never see him again. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

She gathers her resolve before she turns to face him — and though he’s only a few feet away from Rey now, her expression is so frigid it even chills her blood. “You would burn everything in my life to the ground if I tried to refuse you?” Now it’s her turn to glance significantly at the fissured mask that looms over the crimson-lit maze. “Is that what your precious grandfather did?”

“I understand you better than he understood  _ her _ ,” Kylo rumbles menacingly, his eyes flashing with anger. For a moment, as he reaches for her she’s afraid he’s going to tear her apart — but he only pushes a loose lock of hair behind her ear like a languid reminder of his hold on her. “She might’ve been a slave, but she didn’t love pain like you do.”

His presumption is irritating all of a sudden — and Rey twists away from his touch, glaring. “Watching some vids doesn’t make me a masochist.”

“Maybe not, but I felt the way you squirmed when I was bottoming out inside you.” Kylo lazily wraps one arm about her waist, ignoring the stiffness of her body as he pulls her close. His voice is a honeyed purr. “You moaned, Rey. You kept meeting me with your body, begging me for more.”

His index finger traces a line from the side of her neck down to the flat plane between her breasts. Rey hates the way her breath hisses out between her teeth, betraying how good his touch feels. 

“You liked feeling me cum inside you, didn’t you?” Kylo purrs silkily, his arm tightening at her waist as he walks backward, pulling her toward the bed at the labyrinth’s center — but Rey isn’t ready. She sets his palms against her chest and shoves hard, but his lips only curve in amusement at her futile struggling.

“I don’t want you,” Rey snarls between her teeth as she tries to force Kylo away.

He barks with laughter, his voice ragged with the effort of holding her still. “It wouldn’t be so satisfying breaking you if you did.”

The breath gushes from Rey’s lungs as Kylo suddenly swings her up into his arms long enough to unceremoniously dump her back on the sunken mattress. He’s kneeling beside her in the next moment, catching her chin in his hand as he stares her down. “You know what I want from you, Rey.”

Her sore muscles cry out, but Rey draws herself back into the hunched-over pose, sitting on her pointed feet as she leans forward onto her outstretched palms. 

Suddenly Kylo’s hand is on her head again, but not grabbing her hair or pushing her down. This time he simply strokes her hair — and she tentatively nudges back to meet him, savoring the gentle caress. “Just focus.”

It’s almost a relief to not have to worry about looking at Kylo; Rey can instead stare at the edge of the mattress where it meets the gleaming, lacquered floor. The sharp ends of the wood have been covered in a subtle, quilted padding, and she traces the line with her eyes as the dull aches assert themselves within her body again.

Minutes pass in silence, and Rey starts to tremble again as Kylo paces somewhere out in the maze. “Exhale the pain. It’s just discomfort — and it only lives in your mind.”

He’s right: she’s strong. Strong enough to bear this. Rey purses her lips and exhales deliberately, letting the pain flow out of her like an airy river.

“I’m going to touch you,” Kylo murmurs from beside her. He slowly runs his palm down the length of her spine, stopping just shy of the waistband of her lace panties. A moment later the band of Rey’s bra tightens, and she mewls quietly as he works the first hook open. “Quiet, now, and don’t move, or we’ll have to start over from the beginning.”

Rey presses her lips shut. Her conflicted feelings toward Kylo quiet themselves with his every touch, and she swallows back a whine as he finishes unhooking her clasp and the band about her ribs springs free. He flicks the straps off her shoulders, kneeling before her and letting one hand slip down past her collarbone, catching each of her breasts in turn and teasing her nipples until she has to bite her lower lip to stay silent.

“Just like this,” Kylo breathes. His fingers skate lower, hooking into the lacy edge at the top of her panties and gently tugging upward. “Lift your hips.”

Rey can feel her ass trembling a little as she obeys his quiet command — and he drags the thin fabric down to her mid-thighs in a single motion. She tries to drop her hips again, but his other hand is ready for her, catching the soft valley between her hips with an upturned palm.

“Wait.” Kylo’s voice is hoarse with wanting, and Rey can feel her skin prickling as he skims his fingertips along the sensitive skin at the back of her thighs, moving higher toward the curve of her ass. Her hips buck of their own volition as he twists his forefinger into her slit, surging deep and possessing her with a single digit. “You need me here, don’t you, Rey?”

_ Fuck you _ is what she really wants to say, but then the dark-haired man wrenches a second and then a third finger into her, and the only sound that emerges from her lips is a desperate whine.

Kylo chuckles softly, drenching the pad of his thumb in her pussy and then dragging it across her clit until she shudders with wanting. “I thought I wrecked you last night, but  _ fuck _ , you’re so tight…” He pushes deep, grinding into her so that her hips flex atop his hand. “It’s almost like you  _ want _ this. How humiliating.”

Rey can’t speak, and the way his thumb catches her pulls another gasping  _ ahhhh _ from her lips.

“That’s what I thought.” He pulls away from her, wiping his soaked fingers on her thigh and finishing with a stinging slap to one cheek that makes her spine surge. “As you were, now.”

Only now, as Kylo walks back away into the red-shadowed darkness, does Rey truly feel as naked as she is. Her nipples have stiffened to agonized points from Kylo’s ministrations, and she shakes her head, trying to keep the tickling ends of her hair from further agitating her breasts as she waits. Her ass still burns from his sticky slap, and it takes every effort not to fidget.

Kylo’s pale feet trace a path back toward Rey only moments later, and she jumps, startled, as he twists a square-sided post into a cleverly disguised socket beside the bed. Even without raising her eyes she can see that it stands only as high as his hip — and she gasps as the end of a short length of chain suddenly drops into sight before her, the empty clip at its end jangling raucously against the oiled wood.

Kylo lifts her chin with his fingertips, and she sinks back on her hips to gaze up at him. His expression is somber as carved crystal, and the red-jeweled collar glints in one hand as he hefts it a few inches, drawing her attention to it.

“This collar represents my protection. So long as you wear it, your health, personal growth as a submissive, and happiness are my responsibilities.” His dark eyes glow with the labyrinth’s crimson light. “You are free to remove it at any time — but if you do, understand that my protection will be revoked.”

“So  _ you _ can break our contract, but I’m not allowed to?” Tendrils of apprehension unfurl in Rey’s gut as she regards the chainmaille collar again. “What would I become to you if I don’t accept that?”

Kylo’s torso twists as though he’s shrugging, but his fingers ever-so-slightly flex in her eyeline, tightening on the collar“I wouldn’t release you from your contract. But you’d work off your debt to me in other ways.”

“ _ Finn’s _ debt,” Rey mutters, abruptly furious with her best friend again. He could’ve just walked away from all of this after bailing from Snoke Industries — but no, he’d gone flitting off to the OSF like a blurry-eyed moth.

“The debt you volunteered to assume,” Kylo corrects quietly, “which is therefore now yours.”

She stares at the glittering chain as she considers his words, not daring to meet his gaze again lest he somehow read her thoughts. She’s already signed his contract, certainly he should feel welcome to force her to do what he likes.

_ Is  _ her freedom an illusion, or is Kylo offering her an actual choice with this training collar?

From where she’s kneeling, it’s impossible to tell. She lets her gaze wander higher, running up the length of his muscle-corded arms to his shoulders, his neck, his face. He’s so sullen, watching her with that quiet ferocity she could so easily mistake for anger. Whether or not this is a test,  _ he _ cares about her decision.

Rey shifts her hands closer together, covering herself a little. For a few moments she’d actually forgotten she was naked. Her heart’s writhing in her chest, convulsing under the weight of asking what she must, but there’s no avoiding it. “So you want me to be yours, but you can’t ever love me?”

“Yes,” Kylo says softly — and though she’s waiting for something inside her to snap, there’s only silence.

She lets out her breath slowly, shakily, testing how it feels. Can she do this, submit herself to the care of a man who will never truly  _ feel  _ for her?

Isn’t that what she’s already done?

Kylo feels something for her, though — he must. Why else would he be watching her with that look that says he has more of his grandfather in him than he’d like to admit?

The hunger in his eyes is naked and unflinching.  _ This _ is why she can feel herself giving herself to him, letting her will erode into his like individual grains of sand. Because beyond words, beyond thought, he feels  _ this _ for her. Somehow, even though she can’t explain it, she can  _ feel _ the thing between them, binding them, thrumming and shuddering like a plucked string.

No one’s ever wanted her before, not like this. Even if he can’t love her, his wanting has been enough for now. She’s free to remove the thing later, if all this proves too much; whether intentionally or otherwise, he’s given her that escape hatch.

“I accept your collar,” she tells him stiffly, letting her gaze drop back to his hands.

Kylo moves in silence, his motions slow and deliberate as he sinks to one knee before Rey and reaches forward to clip the chainmaille collar around her neck. The metal is cool, patched with warmth where it lay against his hand. It’s surprisingly heavy; the delicately worked centerpiece with its red gemstone fits perfectly into the hollow of her throat, reminding her of its presence with her every breath. She can’t seem to lift her gaze past Kylo’s chest, but his breaths are even, untroubled, his movements equally assured.

“Do you want me to call you  _ Master _ now?” Rey asks as Kylo withdraws his hands.

“Yes.” He’s silent for a moment, and Rey wonders if he’s lost in thought. “Look up at me.”

She obeys even without meaning to. He looks pleased, the corner of his full lips curved in that delicious smirk as he stares down at her.

Kylo leans down, and for a moment Rey thinks he’s going to kiss her. Then something metal snaps at the base of her throat, and the back of the collar presses harder against the back of her neck. She reels backward in shock, but the collar digs into her more insistently than ever with each attempted retreat.

Even as she stares at the wooden post and the silver line now linking her to it, she can’t believe it. He’s clipped her to the damn thing like a dog — and the only thing more demeaning is how she  _ doesn’t  _ hate it.

She’s naked and chained to a post in his dungeon. All those times of watching his vids, and she’d never imagined she’d find herself here.

The way he’s staring down at her, his breaths coming shallowly though parted lips… Rey shivers, the chain clanking faintly as she shifts to and fro beneath his scrutiny.

“Stand up.”

She scrambles to her feet, yelping as she tries to straighten her knees and the collar yanks at her again. The chain’s so short that she’d have to half-crouch if she wanted to completely uncurl her spine — but from the way Kylo’s smile only widens, that seems to be the point.

“Don’t pull too hard,” he cautions as Rey tries to figure out how to balance herself. “The point is to submit voluntarily, not choke yourself out.”

“How should I do that?”

“How should I do that…?”

It takes her another moment to remember. She’s never used titles; she even called Unkar by his first name, and this particular word feels clunkily archaic. “...Master?”

Kylo’s expression softens. “Good girl. Back on your knees.” 

Rey sits on her folded feet again, and he moves behind her, directing her hips forward until she’s at the edge of the sunken mattress. He presses between her shoulder blades, leaning her forward so that she’s braced against the wooden post. 

“Wrap your arms around it, I want you to hold yourself steady.”

Rey tentatively embraces the oiled wood, her pulse quickening as Kylo’s hands skim the length of her spine. After a few moments she’s eager for his touch, rolling her spine to meet him as he caresses her.

“My apprentice … my Rey... ” The warmth of his breath makes her skin crinkle to gooseflesh, and she gasps as his touch moves lower, following the curve of her ass to the outer planes of her thighs. He pricks the full creases underneath her cheeks with his fingernails, ignoring the startled shrieks the gesture coaxes from her lips. “Up, now. Lean forward for me.”

She clings to the wooden post, rearing up on her knees until his rough hold on her eases. “Like this, Master?”

It feels so strange to call him that, but his voice sounds warmer each time she uses it, and now he’s damn near groaning. “Yes, pet. How are your thighs feeling?”

“They’re aching, Master,” she admits.

The backs of her thighs flare with heat as Kylo grips her again, his thumbs moving higher in slow circles until he’s spreading her cheeks open. There’s a wet popping noise as he parts her slickened folds, and he hisses with pleasure even as the strange sensation makes Rey quake. “That gorgeous little pussy,  _ fuck _ …”

Rey squeals as Kylo suddenly rears up behind her with a snarl, somehow finding the drenched line of her slit with his zipper. His cock is stiff, straining into her through the fabric, and his hands catch her breasts, yanking her back against his chest. His skin burns her, and she moans as he tortures her nipples until she’s sore and tingling.

“Touch me,” Kylo groans into Rey’s hair. She reaches back to cup his jaw, but he catches her wrist, drawing her hand lower. “ _ Here. _ ”

The zigzag of metal is a rough kiss against her fingertips. She finds his rigid length just beyond it and strokes him by feel alone, savoring each harsh throb that ripples through his body.

“ _ Now _ .” One of his hands finds its way to her throat, closing over both the collar and Rey’s skin as he grinds his hips against her ass. “You’ve kept me waiting long enough.”

“I’m sorry, Master,” Rey whimpers. It’s nearly impossible to catch the tab of the zipper at this awkward angle, and she fumbles vainly, frustrated by the distracting sensations Kylo’s touch is awakening in her.

“Not sorry enough.” His fingers close around her wrist again, and he twists her arm forward, wrapping it around the wooden pole. “Too long, pet. Now we do things my way.”

The back of his hand skims the underside of her thighs as he yanks his zipper down, and she barely has time to draw breath before he’s thrusting deep inside her with a wordless groan.

She clenches the wooden pole, pussy burning as he buries himself in her completely. His cock is just as overwhelming as she remembers, and she writhes against him, mewling as his dull head scrapes her terminus. He’s bracing against the pole, too, his outstretched arm beside her like iron — and ecstatic shocks reverberate through her belly as he withdraws only to slam into her again. His free hand closes over the chain between her breasts, tugging down just enough that each fresh jolt is a reminder of his control over her.

“I forbid you from coming, Rey.” Kylo’s breath buzzes against her ear, tickling her even as he pumps into her relentlessly. His phallus splits her deeper with each thrust, soaked with her essence as he is. “God, you feel so fucking good raw, I want this to last… That’s my first lesson. I want you to be good.”

“Use me, Master,” Rey finds herself begging as Kylo’s grip on her tightens. It feels less strange to call him that now — as though the metal links around her neck are slowly transforming her, stealing through her body cell by cell. “I can be good to you like that.”

“How, pet?”

“Hurt me, fuck me, fucking  _ cum _ in me…” The way she’s pressing her thighs together is making her clit grind against Kylo’s shaft, sparking white-hot rapture within her and making her tremble. “P-Please.”

“I bet you’d like that,” Kylo chuckles. He twists the chain about his hand in a complete loop, gripping tight as his hips jar her rump in a punishing  _ thump-thump-thump _ tempo. His girth threatens to fracture her, and she gasps as he fucks ley lines of agony into her dripping sex. “Beg for it, if that’s what you want.”

_ Beg… _ The word takes her breath away, and some last bastion of Rey’s intellect rebels on principle. She’s never reduced herself to begging, not even at her lowest moments — but before yesterday, she’d never been impaled on Kylo Ren’s cock, either. Everything feels so different with his body against hers like this, his sweat beading her skin as he invades her very body, grinding her deep within like a pestle against a freshly-broken mortar. The coolness of his voice notwithstanding he’s panting, punctuating each incursion with a soft  _ unhhh _ of pleasure as his heart hammers against her back.

A whine winds through Rey’s voice like ribbon. “Please, Master.”

“No.” Kylo’s movements slow to an agonizing crawl. He draws himself in and out of her with torturous deliberation until Rey’s fingers are quivering on the wooden pole. “You’ll have to do much better than that.”

“I-I can’t,” Rey whimpers.

“Then don’t expect any mercy from me.” The chain swings slack against her body again, and she half-screams as Kylo plunges his hand between her thighs, finding her clit like a magnet and massaging her brutally. “Remember what I told you: don’t cum.”

“Please…”

“I might be prevailed upon if you beg harder. Properly, this time.”

It’s too much. If he keeps going like this he’s going to force her over the brink, and she’s nearing exhaustion as it is — and suddenly words spill from Rey like raindrops. “Master, I need you to cum inside my pussy… I-I simply can’t bear the thought of displeasing you.”

“Better,” Kylo croons, surging into her faster as he moves his hand higher, to the sensitive flat between her hips. “More, pet.”

“I was waiting for you all day, and I couldn’t… couldn’t wait…”

“Couldn’t wait for what?” he demands.

“...couldn’t wait for you to touch me and hold me and fuck me… I want — I  _ need _ to feel you cumming inside me…”

She can feel Kylo quickening, his cock twitching inside her as she writhes about him — and he presses his palm against her abdomen harder, kneading her in a way that’s pleasant and torturous all at once. “ _ Beg _ , dammit!”

“Please,  _ please _ cum inside me!” Rey howls desperately, her words breaking with longing. “Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease, I need you-”

“I’m going to fill you up like the good little slut you are, Rey.” Kylo’s voice is ragged, betraying the same desperation that’s setting her nerves on fire. She can hear his fingers tightening on the wooden pole; he’s close to the brink. “God, I’ve wanted an apprentice like you for so long, you beautifully obedient girl…”

“ _ Master Kylo! _ ” she wails.

He cries out at the words, his thudding assault on her cunt becoming spasmodic as he nears. “Fuck, Rey,  _ fuck-!” _

Kylo gasps like a drowning man, and then his essence is flooding her pussy, pouring into her and overflowing down the insides of her thighs as his cock shudders within her. She teeters on the brink, nearly undone by the way his hand kneads against her lower belly, but wrests herself back just before she breaks.

“Did you cum?” Kylo demands, his voice a harsh rasp against her naked back.

Rey shakes her head, biting her lower lip. She doesn’t trust herself enough to speak.

“Good girl.” He pauses a moment as his cock throbs dully within her again. “Cum for me now.”

“But-”

Rey breaks off with a soft cry as Kylo moves within her again. He’s still hard, and his slow, shallow movements are enough to tease Rey back toward the euphoric peak that’s calling her. His teeth close on her shoulder like an animal, and she whimpers, pinioned between his body and the wooden pole as he pushes her to her limit.

Kylo’s thick member only seems to stiffen as he thrusts into her afresh, and as he rends her she can feel herself fracturing, brilliance exploding through her every fiber as he tips her into infinity. Her cunt pulses with the violent rapture, and he bends her to her limit, cradling her even as he defiles her. 

“Well done, Rey.”

Kylo’s fingers worry at her collarbone as he unclips the chain, and then she’s free, sagging back against his chest as he pulls her into his lap. She yelps as he presses something soft between her thighs, but it’s just a cloth of some kind — and he wipes his cum from her destroyed sex as she recovers herself.

I’m proud of you.” Kylo’s mouth finds hers, and Rey realizes it’s the first time he’s kissed her since he came home. “Do you need another minute?”

She shakes her head jerkily; she doesn’t want to seem needy, not now that she can see his intensity fading again, the polite mask reasserting itself in his eyes. Her fingers find the chainmaille collar as she instinctively wraps her arms about herself. “Do you want me to keep this on?”

“Yes. All the time, from now on. Unless you don’t wish to put it on again.” Kylo regards her somberly. “It’s safe to sleep in, if that’s your concern.”

“Thank you,” she mumbles.

He refastens his pants and helps her gather her clothes, making no comment as she casually drapes them before her body to cover herself. “Your access bracelet will be waiting at the top of the stairs. I’ll have K-2SO meet you at the library’s entrance to escort you back to your room.” He nods, strangely formal after everything that’s just happened, and touches her cheek so softly that she might be imagining his touch. “Take as long as you need.”

Rey nods in return, and then he’s abruptly gone, leaving her alone in the dungeon, her new collar heavier than ever about her neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the story snippets from Kylo's perspective, beginning with [Midnight Special at Takodana](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15129119/chapters/35081435)! I'm collecting these into a companion piece called _Breaking Rey_ , so keep reading these li'l notes for more info!
> 
> THANKS FOR READING!!! As always, I looove your comments, thanks so much for sounding off!
> 
> <3


	6. Aftershocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo’s voice drips with warning. “You aren’t misbehaving, are you, Rey?”
> 
> “Whyever would I do that?” she breathes, startled by the way her thighs slip over each other. She’s slick with desire, eager to feel him bury his thick length in her even as she detests him for his obstinate confidence.
> 
> He catches her wrist again, drawing it toward his swollen trousers, and she twists away — only this time he’s faster, nimbly slipping the jeweled bracelet off her wrist as she pulls back. Rey shouts with fury only too late; Kylo’s bark of scornful laughter fills the quiet room, and he tosses the bracelet aside on a counter out of Rey’s reach.
> 
> “Enough.” Kylo growls, yanking her bare body flush with his. He’s hard as a rock, his cock straining into her belly through his dark jeans even as his stubbled jaw tightens. “You don’t tease _me,_ Rey. That’s not how this works.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyyye lovelies, I'm back! It's been a crazy few months, but I'm super excited to bring you this new piece of Reylo love!
> 
> Other new stuff if ya can't get enough... ;)  
> \+ [More original stories on Kindle Unlimited](https://www.amazon.com/Elegy-Goldsmith/e/B00GHZ4F44/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1)  
> \+ [A new book trailer for my Lovecraftian romance EOS](https://www.elegygoldsmith.com/blog/pre-valentine-s-day-trailer-drop-eos)  
> \+ [Blog stuff about kink IRL!](https://www.elegygoldsmith.com/blog/on-kinky-dating)
> 
> Okay, enough of that — here comes the smexiness! ;)

Beads of water trace unfathomable designs on Rey’s skin, but all she can feel is the collar’s alien pressure around her neck like a stranglehold. The red jewel fits itself in the hollow of her throat, a sparkling leaden anchor. Even beneath the scalding spray — more mist than a proper cascade — the maille metal links are cool, a reminder of Kylo’s inescapable touch.

_ I can’t afford emotional entanglements. _

Rey leans her forehead against the wall tiles, as though their smooth touch can absolve her of the collar’s immense weight. Or the weight of Kylo’s words, which are proving far heavier to bear.

Was it him calling her his mistress that fucked her up so badly? She traces the gridlines of grout before her, narrow canals like a sandpapery Martian landscape beneath her fingertips. It shouldn’t be so astonishing that a man like Kylo has no time to maintain emotional attachments, yet hearing him say it knocked the wind out of her all the same. Those lonely, haunted eyes of his had spoken of something deeper, more powerful binding them together than her eagerness or his contract — or so she’d thought.

Maybe Rey’s just bothered right now because she loathes being wrong.

“Kaytoo,” she calls.

The mecha greyhound’s voice sounds clearly from the doorway. “Yes, Rey?”

The corner of her mouth tugs sideways in a wan smile. “Sorry, nothing … just wanted to make sure you were still there.”

“Of course I am. But I can move a bit closer if you like.”

Rey balks for a moment, but then realizes how silly she’s being. Modesty is the least of her concerns. “Yes, please.”

The robot’s dark silhouette pads into view and sinks to the floor just outside the shower cube in a four-legged plié. “Are you planning to be in here much longer? I detest humidity.”

“Just trying to get my muscles to relax.” She’s still aching from her exertions in the dungeon with Kylo, but there’s more to it than that. Though she doesn’t understand why, she’s procrastinating, as though fearing that when she emerges into the next room she’ll find the dark-eyed man waiting for her in the bed. A few hours ago that thought might’ve made a secret spark of delight glimmer in her belly, but something’s changed.

For the first time since Rey arrived in this apartment last night, she doesn’t want to see Kylo. 

After that huge show of escorting her down to the dungeon beneath the library he simply  _ left _ her there. A corrosive cocktail of confusion, hurt, and resentment rages in her gut, fermenting inside her like liquid agony.

Is it asking too much for him to return her from the depths of his black pit when he’s through with her for the night? Climbing those corkscrewing stairs back to the library to reclaim the diamondine cuff alone had been so,  _ well _ …

“Demeaning,” she mutters to herself, the mist coalescing to droplets on her furious lips.

“I  _ do _ apologize, Mistress Rey,” C-3PO interjects from his array of hidden speakers. “A shower is certainly insufficient for your relaxation needs. I will begin arranging to have a tub installed at-”

“No!” Rey interrupts quickly, muscles tensing again as the house AI’s offer hits her like the crack of a gunshot. “Uh, thank you, Threepio, the shower is fine.”

“According to other women I’ve consulted-”

“I’m not  _ other women _ ,” she snaps. These quarters had seemed so wondrous this morning, especially after her less-than-ceremonious awakening. She can’t bear to be robbed of that warm glow, especially right now. “And I’m positive, thanks.”

Threepio gibbers an abject apology, electronic-edged syllables tripping over each other, and Rey lets out the rest of her breath in a silent rush. “I’m sorry, I didn’t… I just meant it’s fine, don’t trouble yourself,” she amends. “You’ve done enough to make me comfortable here.”

“My pleasure,” C-3PO responds, but the sentient program still sounds hurt by her peevishness. It can’t possibly understand that a bathtub will not make things better. Quite the opposite.

There’s no point waiting any longer; the water isn’t going to wash away the unwelcome, resentful feelings torquing her into a human knot. Rey wrenches the shower off and snatches up one of the waiting towels, irritated at how luxe it is compared to her threadbare one back home. That one always felt like it was scouring her comfortably dry; this thing feels textureless, so soft that it can only belong to an outlandish realm like outer space or a billionaire’s apartment.

The closet hosts a rich assortment of frilly and slinky nightwear, but she dresses in a simple t-shirt and soft flannel boxers she finds tucked away in a bottom drawer. The controlled air makes her skin prickle to gooseflesh, and even after burrowing herself in the mercifully empty bed she can’t seem to get warm.

“Shall I dim the lights for you?” Threepio asks.

The edge of the thick comforter muffles Rey’s voice, even from her own ears. “Yes, thanks.”

The room fades into gloom, and Rey traces K-2SO’s footsteps toward the door by sound alone. “If you’re settled, I have other business to attend to. As per usual.”

“Kaytoo?” Rey’s voice warbles from a sudden cramp in her throat, and the mecha dog pauses. “Could you… If you wouldn’t mind, I mean … could you stay with me a little longer?”

“I could stay until you’re asleep if you like. But I don’t see a point in remaining in your room after you’re unconscious.”

Rey pulls the comforter tight against her mouth to hide an unexpected if unsteady smile. “No, that’d be perfect. Thank you.”

The robot’s dull footsteps clump back toward the bed, and after a soft commotion of turning this way and that, settles beside the frame with a heavy sigh.

The room is too empty, too quiet. She should hear Finn and Rose chattering away through the wall, maybe even Poe’s vivacious tones mixed in if he’s about. The silence slides into her ears like water droplets, filling them and obliterating everything until her eyes start to burn and the cramp in her throat tears at her jagged breaths.

“Are you crying?” Kaytoo asks from the anonymous darkness.

“No,” Rey whispers, but her voice betrays her.

Servos whisper as the mecha greyhound stands again, and the mattress lurches as the massive cybernetic beast clambers up like a real dog, primly settling itself in the bed beside Rey.

“Thanks for not squishing me,” she sniffles.

K-2SO drops its head to the pillow beside hers with an exhausted chuff. “Certainly not. Master Kylo would never forgive me.”

The robot’s acerbic words coax a giggle from Rey, and the dam within her cracks. The tempest of emotions she's been keeping at bay threatens to drown her, and she reaches out to Kaytoo, her palm finding his cool metal side in the darkness. She can almost feel chill dispassionate serenity pouring from the dog, running up along her arm and filling her in counterpoint to her sorrow. 

The fingertips of Rey’s free hand ache, and it takes her several moments to realize they’re clamped tight around the jeweled collar claiming her neck.

She was so happy to see the collar when Kylo first showed it to her, but after how they parted in the dungeon everything feels so strange. Did she  _ really _ know what she was getting herself into, giving in to him? Or has she been letting her hopes run wild, imagining things between them that aren’t there?

He can’t care for her. Not like  _ that _ .

“I’m s-sorry,” she sobs.

Kaytoo doesn’t say anything, but after a moment his cool metal flank vibrates beneath her fingers. The pulse fades and returns in a reassuring rhythm, making her whole body tremble. The words are nearly on her lips to ask if the mecha dog is okay before it hits her.

He’s  _ purring _ .

It’s an odd gesture, but comforting all the same. Her pulse drops, the whistling in her ears fading like a tea kettle taken off the stove.

“Sleep well, Rey,” K-2SO murmurs, and Rey snuggles closer to the immense robot, letting his low rumbling soothe her until her tears finally run dry and she loses herself in a restless slumber.

* * *

The sun bakes her skin like brick, its glare simmering atop her braided, nut-brown hair in a scalding crown. She’s back in the desert, gnarled scrub plants reaching out to clutch at her with water-starved fingers. Unkar’s shop looms behind her like a reaper; she can feel it even without turning to look over her shoulder, its perfume of gasoline and sweat and dread commingling with the dusty earth.

The hairs on the nape of her neck stipple with primal warning. Something’s watching her.

A shadow wavers before her, silhouette shimmering in the unrelenting Nevada heat. For a moment, instinctively, she wonders if it’s one of her parents — but how would she even recognize them? If she ever saw their faces, she’s long since forgotten them.

Rey squints but it’s no use. She needs to get closer to make out anything distinct.

Pebbles roll ominously beneath the soles of her worn-out sneakers as she starts forward. Her knees quaver strangely, as though they’re going to give out beneath her. She’s half-expecting the dark figure to shiver away before her eyes, but it solidifies into a sallow, broad-shouldered man she recognizes all too well.

Kylo. Before she can stop herself she’s stumbling, shoulders slumping as something heavy yokes her neck. It’s choking her, dragging her into the ground — and though Kylo’s ebony eyes flash with concern, he doesn’t move to help her.

Quicksand laps at her sneakers and the cuffs of her threadbare socks, surging up around her calves and enfolding her in the hungry earth. Everything’s giving way beneath her, matter bending to the will of the collar around her throat. Rey tears her gaze away from Kylo, the breath sucked from her lungs as she finally beholds the ravenous maelstrom that’s spun to life where she’d thought there was only ground.

It wasn’t sand below her after all but water, a tempestuous ocean that’s been thirsting for Rey all her life, hiding beneath the skin of the world. Towering thunderheads unfurl overhead, bedecked with lightning like blazing chains. She’s falling into a shadowed, sea-walled vortex at the eye of the storm, falling like Demeter’s lost daughter while Kylo stands overhead, gazing away into the storm clouds like he’s already forgotten her.

Waves snare Rey’s legs, and the collar becomes a choking hand closed about her neck. She can’t breathe and she’s down in this Stygian place all alone and the darkness is calling her name…

* * *

“Mistress Rey!” C-3PO calls insistently, the AI’s electronic voice embroidered with more worry than usual. “Oh dear, oh dear!”

Rey gasps, breath coming in a cool rush now that she’s awake. Her head was tilted against the pillow wrong — and though her panicked fingers claw at the collar, it’s still reassuringly loose about her neck. Her legs are snarled in the unfamiliar sheets, and she draws them free, her thumping heartbeats slowing as she recovers herself, coughing. “Yes, Threepio?”

“I’m  _ so _ sorry, but it’s eight-thirty.”

Is that supposed to mean something to her? Rey scours her groggy memory in vain. It’s jarring enough to wake from a nightmare of all the things she loathes, but Threepio’s prompt isn’t ringing any bells.

“Breakfast will be ready shortly,” the program supplies politely, glossing over any unspoken faux pas.

“Right. Breakfast,” Rey murmurs. The bedroom that surrounds her is startlingly alien, and it takes her another few minutes to remember where she is. The blankets are less mountainous than she recalls; true to his word, Kaytoo must’ve departed sometime after she fell asleep.

She scrubs at her sticky face like a cat. Last night’s resentment simmers in her belly, a hot stone nestled in a bed of coals, hushed but not forgotten. Hopefully by the time Kylo returns to the apartment tonight she’ll have banished the feeling one way or another.

The floor’s warmth coaxes a soft moan from Rey’s lips as she stands and pads to the bathroom for her morning ablutions. Threepio stays mercifully silent, either ignoring her as she attends to her needs or else simply being polite.

He  _ does _ speak up when she heads for the bedroom door. “I don’t mean to be a bother, Mistress Rey, but are you sure you quite sure you’re not, er, forgetting anything?”

Rey scowls at the ceiling. “Like what?”

“That is … Wouldn’t you prefer to shower and dress before enjoying your breakfast?”

“Not especially, no.” She’ll have the apartment to herself for the next eight or nine hours; if Kylo wants her to be clean and coordinated as well as obedient, he’s got plenty of time to put that in writing. Or else leave her another one of those glacial-hued holorecordings.

Rey’s door stays stubbornly shut, and panic roils in her belly before she remembers the jeweled cuff that’s lying forgotten on her bedside table. She’d clawed it off again last night, irritated by the reminder of her captivity, but that’s probably a bad habit to get into. She shouldn’t be so quick to surrender her liberty, no matter how she’s feeling toward Kylo at the time.

_ Kylo… _ Rey can feel her face wrinkling at even the  _ thought _ of his name as the door sighs open, releasing her into the spare Gothic corridor. Perhaps she should’ve taken the time to search for slippers, but the floorboards radiate that omnipresent heat beneath her soles and she doesn’t bother to turn back. Even the illusion of freedom is better than utter confinement, his ravenlike visage reverberating through her head like the tolling of a mournful bell.

Threepio whitters away, nagging Rey about bathing as she stalks through the apartment’s tangled halls. She has a decent memory for routes, but the corridors’ uniform appearance and the AI’s maternal hectoring throw her for a few wrong turns. She’s never been so high and mighty as to be above eating breakfast in her pjs, so there’s certainly no reason to put on airs now.

Fuming blinds her to the intricacies of her surroundings, and she’s so staunchly tuning out C-3PO’s increasingly higher-pitched entreaties that she’s fully beyond the threshold into the kitchen before she notices Kylo sitting at the lacquered wood bar.

Her bare feet squeak on the floor as she skids to a stop, but he’s already turning to greet her. All the abrupt gesture does is make her look guilty.

Guilt _ ier _ .

“Good morning.” Kylo seems paler than usual, shadowy crescents prominent beneath his depthless eyes. He’s wearing simpler clothes than she’s ever seen on him: a fitted white tee and navy jeans with equally dark, comfortable-looking shoes. To all appearances he looks like an Italian model, but exhaustion has left unmistakable imprints on his skin.

“Morning,” Rey replies tightly. She quells the impulse to cross her arms over her chest, a move that would betray her discomfort. He’s wearing full-on footwear, and she hasn’t even got a bra to shield herself.

“I  _ did _ try to mention—” Threepio ventures tentatively.

“ _ Thank you _ , Threepio,” Rey and Kylo snap in unison.

Kylo's gaze finds hers like polar magnets locking onto each other. Rey wants to laugh at their mirrored words, but last night’s bitter aftertaste snuffs her mirth before the spark can catch.

The collar weighs heavier about her neck, the sense of drowning resurging up out of her dreams. At least the floor is reassuringly solid underfoot — and Rey twitches her chin, trying to ignore the chainmaille’s inescapable touch. It’s as though the metal itself has been imbued with Kylo’s electric intensity. “What are you doing here?”

One of Kylo’s thick eyebrows twitches, but it’s impossible for her to tell if the gesture betrays irritation or amusement. “In my own building, or my own apartment?”

“I mean—” Rey swallows back the barbed-wire tone that's creeping up her throat. The collar nags at her again, and she glances dubiously at the floor. It’s clean enough, but bound to hurt. “Do you want to me to kneel?”

“No. As a matter of fact—” Kylo taps the stool beside his. “Join me.”

Rey hesitates a moment, then gingerly pads to where he’s indicated and hitches herself up onto the seat. Her strangled fury about last night wars with her longing for his touch as she stares at him. Her knee is so close to his jeans that she can almost feel the soft fabric against her bare skin, the warmth emanating from his arm making her own tingle with anticipation of his heat.

“I meant what I said yesterday.” The porcelain mug rings against the lacquered wooden bar like a bell as Kylo turns it in his graceful fingers. The force of his gaze seems inversely proportional to the volume of his voice, and right now he's murmuring, damn near turning Rey to marble where she sits. “I intended to be here to orient you myself.”

“You’re a busy man.”

“Nevertheless.” Kylo looks at his mug as he slowly spins it again, and Rey’s heart jolts with realization. The fidgeting is so unlike him, she’s surprised it took her this long to notice. He’s nervous — perhaps the most uncertain she’s ever seen him. “I should’ve been here for your first day.”

Rey doesn’t know how to answer his admission, but the silence between them is unbearable. Part of her wants to touch him, but she’s too afraid of his censure to do more than twitch her forefinger.

“Why don’t we keep things a bit more informal for the moment?” Kylo suggests so casually that she knows the nonchalance must be forced. “I’m sure last night was as overwhelming for you as it was for me.”

Rey’s brow wrinkles. “You don’t want me to call you Master?” Even with the word squarely fixed in her mind she stumbles over it, her tongue reluctant to shape the ungainly syllables.

His lips curve kindly at her misstep. “Not for now.” He’s quiet for a moment, but his knuckles pale as his fingers tighten on his coffee mug. “What did you think about last night?”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters to me.” Kylo’s dark eyes are inescapable as ever, calling to her despite his stillness. “Did you like what happened?”

The red jewel resettles itself in the hollow of her throat as she swallows hard. “Most of it.”

“Until I left you.”

“I—” Rey begins, instinctively combative before words fail her. “I suppose not,” she finishes gruffly.

Kylo’s grip on his mug ever-so-slightly eases. “I’m sorry.”

Heat floods her chest as she stares blankly at him. In all her feverish imaginings last night she hadn’t considered that he might actually  _ apologize _ .

“It was irresponsible of me to leave you like that.” His words are formal, clipped with self-reproach, and he nods mindlessly. “I’m asking a lot of you in becoming my apprentice. My submissive.” His gaze flickers over her body, appraising her like a black flame. “Are you all right?”

Rey’s throat is so tight it takes a moment to reclaim her voice. “Yes.”

“Kaytoo told me you cried yourself to sleep.”

Her scowl becomes positively painful. The robot can’t help himself, but still she feels violated. “That’s none of your business.”

“Everything you do now is my business.”

She bites her bottom lip to keep herself from snarling a thoughtless retort she’d no doubt regret. He’s not wrong; she  _ does _ belong to him, perverse a truth as it is. The collar reminds her of that in every moment, its links whispering a siren song of confinement and rapture.

Kylo pushes his mug aside and turns to face her. “Come here.”

Rey slowly slips off the stool and stands before him. He wraps his arm about her waist, ignoring her soft gasp as he pulls her body close. His free hand skims up under her shirt, coaxing a sigh from her lips as he cups her bare breast and rolls her nipple between his fingertips.

“Rey…” 

Kylo leans forward, and for a moment Rey thinks he’s going to kiss her, but he simply presses his forehead against hers. His skin is hot, vital, and his fingers tighten on her body, betraying his lust. His soft breaths caress her lips, and she wobbles from the snarl of longing at the apex of her thighs.

The movement seems to bring Kylo back to himself and he withdraws, steadying Rey before he releases her. “All right. Breakfast before anything else. You must be famished.”

She is; the mere mention of hunger makes her stomach cramp, and she stumbles back onto her own stool. “D’you mean you want me to-”

“No,” Kylo interjects quickly. “I want you to accompany me today, not serve me.” The ghost of a smile touches his handsome mouth. “Not like that, anyway.”

He moves to a chrome appliance on the black marble countertop and pops its swinging front door open to reveal two plates. The things that hunch on the plates smell delicious, but they resemble overgrown alien mushrooms — and Rey squints at hers in suspicion as Kylo sets the plate and a fork before her.

“Egg, spinach, and bacon quiche,” he says in answer to her baffled expression as he retakes his seat in front of a swirl of marigold resin.

“Quiche?”

“A savory flan.” He frowns at his own explanation. “A sort of pie.”

“ _ Pie? _ For breakfast?”

Kylo smirks and picks up his fork. “Just tell me if you don’t like it.”

Rey follows suit, and to her surprise the strange concoction is actually delightful. The eggs are rich and fluffy, the spinach and bacon such a perfect pairing that she forgets herself for a few minutes, not realizing how heartily she’s been digging in until she notices Kylo watching her out of the corner of her eye.

He smiles a little as she reddens, gesturing to his own half-demolished breakfast. “Don’t stop on my account.”

“Thanks,” Rey mutters, instinctively covering her mouth with her hand. She finishes somewhat more sedately and pads to the refrigerator, pouring herself a glass of filtered water to wash it down.

Kylo follows suit, and her pulse quickens again as he sets his glass beside the sink and turns back to her. “All done?”

She nods.

“Then it’s time to get dressed.” Kylo’s dark eyes narrow as he takes in her simple garments. “Where did you find these?”

“In the closet in the room you had rea-”

“In  _ your _ room,” he corrects smoothly.

“-in … um …  _ my _ room.” Why was that distinction important enough to interrupt her? “In there.”

His gaze hardens with disdain as he scrutinizes the garments. “I don’t think I like what you’re wearing. Take it off.”

“It?”

“All of it.” His face is stern, as though he’s given her a reasonable command like  _ fetch me a glass of water. _ “Everything but your collar and bracelet.”

Rey glances around in shock. “What — here in your kitchen?”

“Here. Now.” He lifts his chin impatiently. “You can close your eyes, if that makes it easier.”

“Is this your idea of  _ casual? _ ” Rey sputters furiously.

Kylo grins cruelly. “Yes.”

This is what she’s signed on for, there’s no choice in fighting it. She was looking forward to another day curled up in Kylo’s library — but the fact that he’s here, choosing to spend time and blowing off no doubt huge responsibilities to do it, doesn’t matter for nothing.

Maybe she can even let herself enjoy this.

A heavy sigh slips past her lips as she presses her eyes shut and tugs her shirt over her head.

“Bottoms, too,” Kylo reminds her unnecessarily as she lets her shirt drop to the floor.

Rey slips her fingers into the waistband of the boxers and pushes the soft flannel down past her hips. The boxers slip off easily and she shivers as the fabric pools over her feet.

“Here.” Kylo’s hands warm her waist as he guides her a few steps away. He releases her, but Rey hardly dares breathe in the silence that follows. She doesn’t even open her eyes in case Kylo is regarding her naked form with that searing, inescapable stare of his.

Rey’s breaths come shallowly as eternal moments pass. She can hear Kylo moving around her, but still he says nothing. His aroma comes in waves, heat and distant spices and other things she can’t name — and what can he be doing but prowling around her and staring?

She moves to cover her mound, but he quickly says, “No,” before lapsing back into that same quiet. Her nipples are so hard that they ache, and she bites her lower lip to keep back a wanton moan.

What’s he doing?

Rey yips as something firm and warm enfolds her right hand — but it’s  _ his _ hand, claiming her fingers with his own. “Come on, pet.”

She lurches into motion beside Kylo, quickly falling into rhythm beside him as his shoes shiver against the hardwood floor. Having to focus on where she’s placing her feet makes her abject nakedness tolerable enough to keep moving. “Where are you taking me?”

“Open your eyes and see, if you’re curious.” Rey says nothing, and she has the sneaking suspicion Kylo’s watching her for a few moments before he chuckles. “Not so brave without your clothes?”

“We’re heading to your — my — bedroom.”

His fingers tighten on hers. “Clever girl.”

The validation emboldens her enough to peek; it doesn’t feel as strange as it should, walking down this Gothic corridor holding Kylo’s hand. Knowing they’re still alone here is a tremendous comfort. Whatever he’s up to isn’t sexual — at least, not entirely — and she’s mollified enough by his apology to follow him and see where this leads.

The doors to her quarters eagerly hiss open at his approach, and he heads straight toward her closet.

“Is there anything I can help you find, Master Kylo?” C-3PO warbles quickly as the dark man strides across the bedroom.

“Thank you, Threepio, but we’ll be fine without your assistance.”

The droid starts to say something else but his voice quickly cuts. From the sharp twist of Kylo’s wrist at that same moment, Rey suspects he’s deliberately muted the house AI.

“Now then.” Kylo stops just inside the entrance to the palatial closet, releasing Rey’s hand as he pokes through its holdings. “Let’s find you something suitable for public.”

She can’t hide her excitement: “You’re taking me outside?”

“Relatively. My private gym.”

“Your own dungeons, your own gym…” Rey crosses her arms over her naked breasts, pretending not to care that she’s completely exposed to him. “Is there anything of your own you  _ don’t _ have?”

“No. Why should there be?” Kylo laughs quietly, amused by her outrage. He saunters closer to Rey, and she doesn’t realize she’s retreating from him until the wall chills her shoulders. “I’ve worked hard for what I have. Do you have a problem with that?”

“It’s none of my business,” she murmurs, averting her gaze to one of the racks of hanging garments as Kylo looms closer.

“I like having  _ you _ to myself more than I can say,” the dark man rumbles, his words skittering along her bared neck as he leans close. “Do you have any opinion about that?”

Rey’s crevice tightens at the thought of him claiming her. She’s still sore from last night but still she wants him to drag her to the bed and wrap her body around his, filling her with his essence as she comes undone.

“I still don’t understand what you want from me,” she murmurs as Kylo’s dark hair tickles her cheek.

His full lips brush her skin. “Everything.”

He catches her wrist and guides it toward the zipper of his jeans, but she draws her hand away at the last second. Kylo’s frustrated gasp sends a frisson of pleasure deep into her belly, and his glower makes her belly cramp again. He may be her master, but she holds him in a strange, enchanted thrall, too.

Kylo’s voice drips with warning. “You aren’t misbehaving, are you, Rey?”

“Whyever would I do that?” she breathes, startled by the way her thighs slip over each other. She’s slick with desire, eager to feel him bury his thick length in her even as she detests him for his obstinate confidence.

He catches her wrist again, drawing it toward his swollen trousers, and she twists away — only this time he’s faster, nimbly slipping the jeweled bracelet off her wrist as she pulls back. Rey shouts with fury only too late; Kylo’s bark of scornful laughter fills the quiet room, and he tosses the bracelet aside on a counter out of Rey’s reach.

“Enough.” Kylo growls, yanking her bare body flush with his. He’s hard as a rock, his cock straining into her belly through his dark jeans even as his stubbled jaw tightens. “You don’t tease  _ me _ , Rey. That’s not how this works.”

With a suddenness that rips a gasp from her throat Kylo spins Rey’s hips, and she clutches at the nearest closet rod to keep her balance. Something downy-soft runs across the curve of her ass, and it’s only as Kylo’s soft breaths warm her slit that Rey realizes he’s on his knees behind her, his hair brushing her inner thigh.

“Please—” she begs, regretting her insolence now that he’s on the verge of defiling her so unthinkably.

“Keep your hands on that clothing rod or I’ll tie you up and start all over again,” Kylo rasps from behind her ass as she pants with terror. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

The word feels natural now, somehow purer given his debasement of her: “Yes, Master.”

No sooner is the title past Rey’s lips than Kylo’s hands tighten on her ass and he nuzzles into her folds, his tongue abrading her clit as his nose dips inside her crease. She squeals and tries to resist, but he only slaps her ass and punishes her harder with his mouth, reminding her that he’s still in charge even though he’s on his knees.

The shameful bliss is over too quickly; no sooner does the slow, ecstatic wave start to build inside her than Kylo pulls away, leaving her wanting. He probes her with his fingers, his long fingers sinking deep into her cunt and kneading her until she shivers with fervor.

“Here are your choices,” Kylo rasps as he stands behind her, still working at her with his hand. “Either you can get dressed and follow me downstairs, or you can take more like this before we leave.”

But Rey has something else in mind — something that may not be her place, but has been on her mind since even before she left her own apartment for his. She twists in his arms, slithering to the floor like a snake and sinking to her knees before him. The dark man doesn’t stop her as she caresses his erection with one hand and clumsily undoes his jeans with the other. The waistband of his boxers is there before her next, and she tugs it down in the next moment, freeing his torrid length.

_ Fuck. _ Rey’s mouth goes dry as she stares at Kylo’s cock, her cunt pulsing greedily. It takes every fiber of her resolve not to pounce on him right then, but she tightens her grip on his tugged-open jeans and gazes up at him imploringly. His raven-dark eyes are wide with shock, his full lips slightly parted as he stares down at her.

“Master, I-I want to…”

“Yes,” Kylo breathes. He knots his fingers into his hair and pulls her close as she takes his phallus in her hands, licking his velvet-smooth head and murmuring as he ripples in her grip. She explores him with her tongue, taking him into her mouth and then her throat as her eagerness for him grows. His fingers flex in her hair as she sucks him, savoring the taste of the first sweet droplets that leak from his inordinately huge prick. If he hadn’t made a name for himself in the corporate world, he certainly could’ve made a living in seedier ways.

“ _ Fuck _ , Rey,” Kylo seethes, his jaw clenched tight as he swells inside her throat and she massages the base of his shaft with eager fingers.

Just as suddenly as she started Rey stops, audibly popping Kylo’s unsheathed cock past her lips and wriggling away to stand before him again. The raging look in his eyes tells her she’s going to pay for her abrupt withdrawal, but it was worth it to prove her point. “It isn’t nice being left unexpectedly.”

Kylo gapes at her for a moment, his body rigid with frustration — but when she speaks again his voice is so low that jolts of commingled fear and anticipation spark in Rey like live wires. “No, it certainly isn’t.”

In truth she wants to fling herself into his arms like a horny siren and plead to transfix herself on his porn star dick, but last night’s awkwardness lingers like a spectre. Rey’s smug righteousness evaporates, leaving her somber and afraid as she stares up at Kylo’s wan face. “So what happens now? How do we…”

She trails off, not even sure how to articulate whatever it is between them that she wants to repair. To her relief Kylo’s expression isn’t the thwarted fury she’s expecting from him but wide-eyed worry. It’s unimaginable, but just for a moment he looks as lost as Rey feels. 

“What can I do?” he asks, the hoarseness of his voice all the more prominent amid the wardrobe’s muted hush.

The floor and the air is warm enough, but Rey’s struck by a sudden chill, a barely-palpable draught that crawls over her skin. She sways toward Kylo, seeking his warmth, and then his arms are about her, cradling her body against his so tenderly that she can almost feel herself eroding into him.

“Hold on,” Kylo murmurs into her hair. He scoops her into his arms, cradling her against his chest as he strides back toward the bedroom proper. The lump Rey thought she’d cried out last night is back again, pulsing in her throat like a trapped diamond. How can she possibly feel this fragile, like his words could slice her to ribbons?

“I don’t understand,” Rey whimpers.

Kylo’s low voice rumbles through his chest. “Don’t understand what?”

“It wasn’t that bad, you leaving like that last night… It’s not like we even know each other properly… Why am I so damn _ weak? _ ”

“It’s not weakness,” he returns with a forcefulness that startles her. “You’re dropping.”

Sub drop. Of course.

The world tilts crazily, and Rey can only cling to Kylo as he sits on the bed, settling her across his lap as he sits back against the mussed pillows. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, cradling her against his chest as he watches her thoughtfully. He traces a path down the slope of her neck with his forefinger, coming to rest on the red jewel gracing her throat. “It takes courage to submit like you did to me last night.”

“Courage—” Rey snorts, mortified by the harsh prickling of tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Yes. You deserved better.” Kylo waits until she meets his gaze again. “ _ I _ owed you better than walking away.”

Her heart shudders in her chest as he caresses her back. Her bare breasts are there before him, the coral nubs hardened to points from his touch, and she shifts her knees, both disturbed and aroused by the wetness still staining her thighs.

There’s only one thing she wants from him right now — and he won’t abandon her, not this time. He’s reluctant to let her go, but his grip eases as she turns toward him, folding her legs outside his as she leans into his chest.

Kylo trails his fingers over dimples at the small of Rey’s back, his breath skirling off the shell of her ear as she splays herself over his lap. She presses her breasts into his soft cotton shirt and nuzzles his neck, savoring the reverberations of his quickening heartbeat as they echo through her. His immense member has been slumbering, but it rouses quickly as she rolls her hips, stroking her drenched folds along his frenulum.

“What do you want from me?” Kylo mutters, cradling Rey closer as his sex twitches and stiffens against the pool at the crux of her thighs.

Rey can only keep writhing against him. The sensations are building quickly within her, carnal hunger on the verge of being sated each time Kylo’s ridge slips along her soaked aperture. He can feel it, too; his breaths are ragged with desire, and his hands tighten on her afresh, urging her closer toward her undoing with each meeting of their hips. His shaft pulses against her sex, bewitching her and demanding that she open herself to him to lose herself completely.

He wants Rey. Surely she won’t leave this bed until she’s taken his cum.

“Fuck me,” Kylo rumbles into Rey’s neck.

His fingers claim the swell of her ass, guiding her pussy toward his terminus — but she twists away at the last moment, thwarting him and drawing a hiss of reproach from his lips. She’s perversely pleased by his reaction, guilt and fear sending tingles skittering across her skin. 

Kylo's voice is tight with warning. “I won’t repeat myself.”

Good. She wants to bask in his anger, his wrath at being denied. It’s the same anger she's been feeling toward him since last night, a rage that will only fester if it’s ignored — and this is the only way she can think of to purge it from both of them.

Rey bucks Kylo a second time, slipping around his thick erection as he moves to claim her, but this time he’s prepared for her last-moment evasion. A startled cry darts from her lips as he catches her about the throat, his elegant fingers wrapping about the hollow beneath her jawbone.

“No. You’re at  _ my _ mercy, Rey.” Kylo’s lips twist in a handsome sneer as she fights him, but he’s more than a match for her. The fingers of his free hand find their way around the back of her thighs and to her slit, and he grunts as he drives his fingers into her cunt again, sinking deep in her. Rey moans, overwhelmed with rapture as he forces her down against his raw cock. The ridge of his head grinds against her clit like flint on steel. “Beg me to stop, if you think that'll help.”

“Please,” Rey whimpers, nearly overcome by his ecstatic torture. “Please don't...”

“You don't want me to let you go.” Kylo plunges his fingers into her up to the knuckle, and Rey clutches at the soft cotton of his shirt to keep herself from spilling over the brink. He twitches his fingers, taunting her. “You want me here, inside you.”

“You know I don't!”

“You do.” Kylo chuckles breathlessly as he slides his sodden fingers out of her. A moment later she whimpers anew as his thick, magma-hot head nudges between her folds, threatening to reclaim her. His obsidian eyes rage at her; she can feel his need for her as powerfully as his thudding heartbeat. “Get yourself off on my dick.”

“But—”`

His voice brooks no argument. “ _ Now. _ ”

Rey’s hips are already trembling from the effort of holding herself away from his lap. The insides of her thighs press against each side of his slickened cock like she's straddling a pommel horse. He keeps her neck caged in one hand, compressing just hard enough to hold her in place as she shivers atop him.

“I’m not wearing a condom, Rey.” Kylo smirks at her. “You’d have to be a real slut to let me inside you like that.”

No sooner does Rey draw breath to seethe at Kylo than her weary legs give out and she impales herself on his raw phallus, howling gutturally as he devastates her. His quiet gasp and the flaring of his dark eyes makes her pussy throb as she sinks onto him inch by glorious inch, their bodies interlocking with tectonic violence. He palms the small of her back with his other hand, driving her down against him and thrusting into her until the waistband of his jeans grinds between their flush hips.

Kylo pulls Rey closer and she clutches at his chest, gasping shallowly as the dark man’s cock throbs in her channel. He burns like the sun, splitting her to her core even as he stares at her, his plutonic gaze stirring something deeper still. His panting breaths match hers, and her pussy convulses as he slaps her ass. “Get moving.”

Rey clutches awkwardly at Kylo’s shirt as she struggles to steady herself. Her sapped muscles are unused to these strange new gymnastics, and she quavers as she lifts herself from Kylo’s lap.

“Now down again.” His jet eyes narrow as he peers at her scornfully. “Don’t you know how to fuck?”

His quiet condescension makes heat rush to Rey’s twitching legs and she lets her hips fall, crying out with pleasure as he fills her to breaking.

“That’s right.” Kylo’s wandering hand finds her breast, and he caresses her roughly, drinking her in as she fucks him. Rey mews as he lazily slaps her tit, not hard enough to sting but enough to shock her with the suddenness of the gesture. “There’s nothing wrong with being a whore. That’s why I bought you.” He traces his forefinger along the line of her ribs. “Because I wanted to ruin you like this.”

“Manipulative monster,” Rey sobs.

Kylo laughs louder now. He releases her throat, burying his fingers in her hair a moment later and yanking her head forward so that their noses almost touch. “Manipulative monsters make you wet.”

He’s so right that it hurts — and she remembers too many nights of watching him debase partners just like this, huddled in front of her computer to hide the monitor’s accusing glare, hand jammed down the front of her pants.

Kylo’s eyes are the darkness that’s always watched her, the ravening shadow that’s been waiting. He raises his free hand — but rather than abusing her again, he strokes the heavy chainmaille about her neck. “Cum for me.”

Some part of Rey still begs to resist him, but it’s as though Kylo can read the rebellion in her eyes. His hand tightens in her hair, and then his lips crush hers. She moans into his mouth, and as her spent legs collapse he’s there to catch her, rolling her beneath him on the palatial bed.

The sharpness of Kylo’s first thrust makes Rey yelp, and she clutches his shirt, writhing against him as he buries his blistering staff in her womb.

“Cum,” he rasps.

Rey whines as Kylo bends her out of shape, receding from her quim only to penetrate her again. His hips pin hers to the bed; she can’t retreat far enough to escape him.

“Cum for me, Rey.”

Kylo’s breath is hot against her perspiration-drenched skin. His clothes abrade her, mocking her nakedness as he fucks her. His cock is overwhelming, grinding into her in a perfect rhythm that makes the gathering sensations in her belly inevitable.

Rey sobs, riding the edge of undoing as Kylo pounds into her, his body betraying the telltale signs of his quickening. His body is like iron against hers, his phallus throbbing inside her already-wrecked channel as heat gathers in him like woken embers.

“Master, please!” Rey cries, the words slurred from the bliss that's already begun to take her.

Kylo lets out a strangled shout as he stiffens, sheathing his raw cock in her shuddering pussy one final time. His scalding essence floods her channel in the next moment, a reminder of how perfectly their bodies are entwined.

“Rey,” Kylo murmurs as he throbs within her, emptying — and as the afterglow claims her, the fierce way he holds her is enough to silence the fears that’ve been worrying at Rey since he left her in the labyrinthine darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sub drop is soooo rough — and everyone handles it differently. For someone like Rey,who's never known true affection, that's an even rougher road. Good thing she has Kylo to walk it with her <3 (and don't miss out on his side of the story in [Breaking Rey](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15129119/chapters/35081435))!
> 
> FMI about sub drop, check out [this link](https://submissiveguide.com/safety/articles/sub-drops-emotional-side) <3
> 
> Thanks so much for reading - and throw down a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> xoxo,  
> Elegy


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